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THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH 



THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH 

A COMPENDIUM OF 
MISSIONARY HISTORY 

IN TWO PARTS 



PART I 

PRE-REFORMATION MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 



BY 
LUCY CUSHING JARVIS 



..* 



NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 

285 FOURTH AVENUE 

1900 



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* 



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V 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two CtlWfc* RECEIVED 

OCT. g0 1902 

Cm»^K?HT ENTHV 
CLASS CL^ggS No. 
J COPY B 



Copyright, iSgq, igoo, 
By James Pott &* Company 



THE WRITER'S INDEBTEDNESS 



Conscious of many more imperfections than those 
which obtrude themselves, to dedicate this volume to 
any of the many to whom it should be dedicated would 
be presumption. 

To acknowledge indebtedness is another matter, and 
in sending out its pages there must first be inscribed 
some of the names without whom it would probably not 
have been written. 

My Grandfather's memory and his unfinished history 
have been a household possession since my earliest 
memory, and it was first of all from Bishop Williams, 
his great pupil, that the encouragement came which 
tempted me to follow even at such distance, in his foot- 
steps. 

For help in preparation I must also record my indebt- 
edness to Miss Smiley and the S. H. S. H. S., whose 
helpfulness in the course I took will ever be an inspira- 
tion. 

Next I must mention Dr. Maclear and his series of 
Missionary Histories, from which, as all will see, I 

iii 



iv The Writer's Indebtedness 

borrow largely both in quotation and general develop- 
ment of plan. The Doctor also most kindly went over 
the book in manuscript and made several helpful sug- 
gestions. 

To. Prof. Hart I owe a rare debt of personal labour 
and supervision. While to my classes in New York 
and those who made those classes possible by hospitality 
and ready interest I owe the practical setting of the 
chapters in the form in which they appear. 

To crown all I am indebted to my Father and my 

Mother, whose home training and example have made 

me to linger with delight in the company of all those 

who form the vast army of labourers in the Vineyard 

of our Lord. 

Lucy Cushing Jarvis. 
'Advent, 18pp. 



PREFATORY NOTE 



In these days of ever increasing interest in the his- 
tory and the work of the Church of Christ, it might 
well seem unnecessary to write in commendation of 
the purpose of a volume which traces the outline of 
the history of Christian Missions. Yet the special 
design of this work, the former portion of which is 
herewith presented to the reader, is such as to claim 
at least a word of explanation. The writer, whose 
lectures upon these and kindred subjects many have 
heard with interest and profit, supplements the work 
of others by providing in concise form a manual 
sufficient for elementary instruction in that part of the 
history of the Church which has to do with the 
progress of its Missions. Beginning with Apostolic 
times, she describes the successive stages in the con- 
version of the several nations or races of Europe, and 
the manner in which that part of the world became 
Christian. And from this wonderful narrative, illum- 
ined by the life and work of saints of earlier days, the 
history will pass on to the story, no less interesting 



vi Prefatory Note 

and hardly less wonderful, of that which has been 
accomplished by the heroes and martyrs of these later 
times. I may venture to believe that the purpose of 
the writer will have been accomplished if she inspires 
the reader with the desire and the resolution to share 
in this great work, the beginning and progress of 
which may be indeed described in part, but the issues 
of which shall be such as no tongue or pen of man 
can tell. 

Samuel Hart. 

Advent, 1899. 



The Planting of the Church 



CHAPTER I 



THE PLACE OF MISSIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
HISTORY 

The key to all history is the progressive 
M 8 tor7 to History of the Church. The story of Church 

progress is the History of Missions. 
To appreciate this fully and before entering on a de- 
tailed account of Missionary History since the coming 
of Our Lord, it is necessary to do two things. First, to 
analyse the needs of human nature and society and the 
failure of the various attempts which have been made to 
solve their many problems both in modern and in olden 
times. Secondly, to sketch the continuity of Church 
History from its beginning on earth in the Garden of 
Paradise to our Lord's first Advent, so that its sub- 
sequent story from that moment to our own times and 
its office of preparation for Christ's Second Coming 
may be more clearly understood and appreciated. Both 
of these points are merely introductory and can there- 
fore be treated but cursorily, they will, however, enable 



2 The Planting of the Church 

us to weigh justly the value of Christian missions and 
what they have done and may do for mankind. 

From whatever side we view Humanity cer- 
Fi«tin- ta i n facts confront us which make its prob- 
SriF 8 lems complicated. The fact of Sin, the fact of 
of wtory Death> the universa i sway of both: the fact 
of Sorrow, the fact of Suffering, as part of the expe- 
rience of every one without exception, difference being 
only in degree. These facts are ever present every- 
where; but they do not exist without conflict. Good- 
ness Life, Joy, and Pleasure exist equally in their turn 
and 'at every point a battle is fought for the triumph 
of one or the other. Of all the struggles that between 
Sin and Goodness is the keenest. Sin reigns every- 
where but everywhere men and women and children 
appreciate Goodness and strive in greater or less degree 
to make it their own. Around this conflict between 
Good and Evil every event of history, personal, secular 
and religious may be grouped, and the wonder springs 
up in our hearts that after so many years of alternate 
failure and success human nature should continue the 
fight and not abandon itself to the sway of what is so 
hard to conquer; but the struggle still goes on. 

Nation after nation, generation after genera- 

^ncces,- tion have sought to set at rest forever the per- 

Mf 8 piexing questions of right and wrong; have 

sought to so express them that sin and the 

desire to sin should be ended forever. Wise men of 



The Place of Missions 3 

Egypt, Philosophers of Greece and Rome, Culturists 
of India and China have each in turn attempted this, 
but the answer to their callings or their systems of pas- 
sive resistance has been like the silence which followed 
the cries of the priests of Baal on the mountain top in 
Israel long ago. There has been no answer and one 
after the other the callers and the dreamers have gone 
to their long home and Sin and Death live on. Yet in 
spite of failure to destroy there exists still a universal 
belief that there are superhuman powers able to control 
both. Gree-Gree men in Africa, Medicine Men among 
the Indians of America, Prayer Wheels in India and 
China are busy all day long to secure the intervention 
of these powers. 

From the long story of their failure, from the 
me ques- nauseous sight of the millions of pilgrims on 

tions an- ° r Q 

t?eBiMe y tne Ganges bank seeking to wash out the 
stains of sin in its waters, it is a relief to turn 
to one nation and to one book which in all the world 
alone attempts to give a consistent history of the cause 
of the struggle and to prophesy its final end. The Jew 
is the nation, the Bible is the book. It shows us Evil 
before the world began, it shows us the end of Evil 
when this world and time shall be no more. It ex- 
plains Death; it grapples with Sin; it raises the Mys- 
tery of Suffering from the abyss of Divine displeasure 
where men are always seeking to place it, and exalts 
it also as a token of privilege and of grace. This book 



4 The Planting of the Church 

not only teaches us the true relation of these facts but it 
teaches us definitely about God, the " superhuman 
power able and willing to control Evil," and of its con- 
quest by Christ Jesus. It goes further, and shows us 
how to conquer by means so simple that the very 
weakest and most ignorant can use them. But The 
Book does even more than this; it records the com- 
mand of God to spread the knowledge of these means 
of Grace won for man by the Incarnation, Suffering 
and Death of the Son of God. And so we come to the 
beginning of Missionary History, and the story of this 
book. The Missionary solves Life's problems. The 
History of Missions shows to us that the solving of 
the problems does not lie in adjusting man's relation- 
ship to man, but by perfecting first man's relationship 

t0 ° ' This brings us to the second introductory 
SSSftSgr point, the continuity of Church History and 
Joitiiuit/ its relationship to all history. 

In all study it is valuable, once in a while, 
to take wide glances; to look up and out from the in- 
vestigation and contemplation of detail to glance for 
a moment at the contour of the whole. So in religious 
history, it is good once in a while to leave the study of 
its periods and look at the whole marvelous structure 
as it rises before us outlined in universal history. When 
we do this, we see besides the suburbs and hamlets as 



The Place of Missions 5 

it were of human thought, built by each generation or 
national type of mind, one long, consecutive line of 
buildings, in which human souls have worshipped the 
same God since the beginning of the history of man- 
kind. If we look more closely we shall see that all 
these little suburbs and hamlets are strange copies of 
sections of the one great City of God : here a pinnacle, 
there a dome, or here again a foundation stone, or else- 
where vague portions of all, set up and exaggerated 
into complete buildings of man's faith. 

periods of * n ^ e £ reat c ^y we see fi rst °f a ^ tne Chris- 
hlstor^. tian Church. Its corner stone is Christ, its 
Jewish, ' foundation Apostles and Prophets: while 

Patriarchal r r 

upon these are being builded, generation after 
generation, the lively stones of nations and individ- 
uals preparing for the coming into it of The Great 
King. Behind the Christian Church we see the older 
Jewish Temple with its ritual of service and sacri- 
fice; type and preparation in minutest detail of the 
Christian Church. And back of the Jewish Temple we 
find the arching blue of the canopy of the Most High 
God, the worship of the patriarchal ages from the time 
of Abel on.* These all set forth one and the same 
principle of human history; its keynote being not the 

* There is also that Church in Paradise where the first " two " 
walked and talked with God in absolute freedom and unembar- 
rassment of intercourse. 



6 The Planting of the Church 

relationship of man to man, but the relationship of man 
to God, in time and through eternity.* If we look 
closely at this consecutive and consistent story, we find, 
as in the natural sciences, that it is a strange tale of con- 
traction and expansion. The worldwide Church of the 
Patriarchs embracing all the human race, contracts to 
the story of one family of that race : narrow in its Faith 
and narrowing in its limits, it is conspicuous for this 
great characteristic, its faithfulness to the clear and dis- 
tinct expectation of the Messiah, and the truth of the 
unity of God. 

That Messiah came. With His advent be- 
of e chris£ s £ an ^ or ^ e Church a period of ever increas- 
SStoSr 1 " 511 * n g expansion. Nation after nation is being 

added to the number of its children till one 
day all men shall, as in the early days of our race's in- 
fancy, call Him Blessed. 

Turn now to the suburbs and hamlets of human 
faith. Ever since the days when " men began to call 
themselves by the name of the Lord " to distinguish 
them from those who " chose " (from the meaning of 
the word heresy — to choose) other sources of au- 

* Dr. Edersheim in his volume on Exodus says of this : " Un- 
doubtedly all mankind had at first some knowledge of the one true 
God, and a pure religion inherited from Paradise. This prime- 
val religion seems to have been longest preserved in Egypt. * * * 
The more we study these ancient records of Egypt the more 
deeply we are impressed with the high and pure character of its 
primeval religion and character." 



The Place of Missions 7 

thority, we find the human mind inventing for itself 
heresy after heresy. The " heresies " of the 
hel^/and Patriarchal and Jewish dispensations are the 
ism en " heathenism, of to-day. Through all of them, 
however, we find a thread torn from the Gar- 
ment of the Whole which brightens its texture with 
genuine colour and gives to it the quality which makes 
it able to fascinate and hold the human fancy, In every 
heathen cult of which we have knowledge; in every 
philosophy, past or present, now known to us; and we 
may add in every Christian heresy; man can be chal- 
lenged to find one truth, one conception of God or his 
creation, bearing the stamp of genuineness which is 
not found in each of the three great stages of religious 
development — Patriarchal, Jewish and Christian. The 
challenge may also be given to find one of these non- 
Christian beliefs which does not contain some thought 
in common with the " One Religion of mankind." 

The faith, whose progress we have to deal 
church ex- with m tne f ollowing pages, is the one which 
fills all time; it rings in that epitome of the 
Creeds, God's sentence of comfort to Eve 
in the Garden; and ever in clearer fulness, like the 
growing pealing of a bell, it sounds through Tabernacle 
and through Temple, till, in the glowing expectation 
of the Christian Church, it becomes like the sound of 
many waters, uttered by the voices of all nations in the 
Hymn before the Throne. Its progress is the story of 



8 The Planting of the Church 

the gradual expansion of the Church of Christ, " Be- 
ginning with Jerusalem, through Samaria and all 
judea," it passes to Greater Israel, " All the world." 

Each nation, as it enters the portals of the 
The churcii Church, sounds a note peculiarly its own. The 

and the ' r J 

nations story of each conversion is a separate lesson 
to those who seek to Evangelize to-day. The 
missionaries of the past have left so deep an impression 
on all national life that we are convinced that the story 
of the conversion of the nations should be the text book 
of sociology. The change and transformation of na- 
tional character under the influence of the " Hope of 
Israel " contains the secret of the change and trans- 
formation needed by men to-day. May the short and 
inadequate account contained in these pages help to set 
men more earnestly and more hopefully at the task im- 
posed upon us by Christ. His final word and command 
was, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel 
to every creature." His final testament was Himself; 
the strengthening gift of His presence to go before us 
to that work ; " Lo, I am with you always even unto 
the end of the world." 

So much for theoretical history, let us now 
Son P o/ a " turn to the history of events. Looking at 
christian the history of the world in the aspect of 

Church. J l 

its being the story of man's relationship to 
God, we find two events upon which all the rest turns. 
The first is the Incarnation and the Coming of Christ in 



The Place of Missions 9 

Humility. The second, His coming again in Glory to 
be our Judge, and to exalt us to the same place whither 
He is now gone. At His first coming He descended 
and dwelt in our Tabernacle, so at His second coming 
this is to be reversed and we are to ascend and dwell 
with Him. 

The preparation for our Lord's first coming 

Secular and ° 

prefara- was tw °f°ld, secular and religious. To the 
both id 1 - Jews was confided the religious preparation 
from the time of Abraham. The preserva- 
tion of the knowledge of the one God, the expectation 
of the Messiah, the training of the Jewish people to a 
sense of their worldwide destiny, is traced step by step 
in the pages of the Old Testament. 

Side by side, however, with this religious prepara- 
tion went another and a secular preparation. This is 
also recorded, though only in the form of hints and 
suggestions of its progress, in the Scriptures of the 
Jews. Each of the six great Dynasties known to us 
in history before our Lord was born, besides working 
out its own national life, played its part in this " mak- 
ing ready the way " for the coming of the Lord. 

To quote Dr. Edersheim again, " The devout 
The office student of history cannot fail to recognize it 

of the Gen- J fe 

tiles as a wonderful arrangement of Providence, 

that the beginning and the close of Divine 

revelation to mankind were both connected with the 

highest intellectual culture of the world. When the 



I o The Planting of the Church 

Apostles went forth into the Roman world they could 
avail themselves of the Greek language, then univer- 
sally spoken, of Grecian culture and modes of thinking. 
And what Greece was to the world at the time of 
Christ, that and much more had Egypt been when the 
children of Israel became a Godchosen nation. Not 
that in either case the truth of God needed help from 
the wisdom of this world. On the contrary, in one 
sense it stood opposed to it. And yet while history 
pursued seemingly its independent course, and phi- 
losophy, science and the arts advanced apparently 
without any reference to Revelation; all were in the 
end made subservient to the furtherance of the King- 
dom of God. And so it always is. God marvelously 
uses natural means for supernatural ends and maketh 
all things work together to His glory as well as for the 
good of His people." 

Later he adds : " Somehow the salvation of Israel 
was always connected with the instrumentality of the 
Gentiles. It was so in the history of Joseph, and even 
before that, and it will continue so till at the last, when 
through their mercy Israel shall obtain mercy." 

Egypt preserved the " Holy Seed " in its in- 

Duties of . 

the several fancy. Babylon dispersed it m its pride to 
Aw? Ad- every quarter of the globe that in the humil- 
iation of captivity the Jew might learn to 
know God more perfectly and bring the " Hope of Is- 
rael " back to the knowledge of the heathen world. 



The Place of Missions 1 1 

Persia built again the waste places and gave to the 
Jews once more a place of habitation and a name, a 
place where twice a year from their far off foreign 
homes the sons of Israel might come to unite around 
one altar and hear from the fountain head of the " ex- 
pectation of the Jews."* Greece gave to the world the 
language of the New Testament and the Septuagint 
and the ships, which bore the pilgrims and later, the 
missionaries to and from Jerusalem. Rome created the 
roads which knit the peoples of the earth in one. It 
made Roman law and citizenship; it maintained that 
" truce of God " which tradition says held all the world 
in peace when Christ was born. While the Jews pre- 
eminently had charge of the religious preparation for 
our Saviour, without any one of these great nations, 
some part of the " making ready " for that December 
night at Bethlehem would have been wanting. 

The preparation for the Second Coming, the 
For the Return of our Lord, is also manifold. Each 

second 

Advent nation, each form of religion, has its place and 
service. The book of the Revelation tells us 
this, Gog and Magog, the many Angels and the 
Seals, all are part of the great march of Time towards 
Eternity. 

Let us then turn our eyes to the story of the prepara- 
tions that have been made since our Lord was taken up 

* Tradition says 3,000,000 of people used to gather at these 
feasts. 



1 2 The Planting of the Church 

from Olivet so many years ago. He left a direct com- 
mission. A Kingdom was to be formed and into it 
every one who would hear His message was to be gath- 
ered against His return. No worldly power was to 
prevail to stop it. All events were to be turned to its 
strength. 

Let us trace the story from its beginning. 

THE BEGINNING OF THIS CHRISTIAN ERA 

It is said that on that first far off Christmas day when 
Christ was born, universal peace was on the physical 
world of nations. Quiet stillness too was on the spir- 
itual world. But the peace and the quiet and the still- 
ness were the peace and the quiet and the stillness of 
exhaustion, not the peace which passeth understand- 
ing, not the quiet and the stillness of the " Come unto 
me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will 
give you rest," or the " Learn of me for I am meek and 
lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. ,, 
It was rather the pause in the storm which was to wake 
with redoubled fury after the breathing space of calm. 
The nations had sunk exhausted into a peace tradi- 
tion says was universal, only to spring up into bitterer 
hate and struggle. 

Philosophy, and heathen religious rite and ceremony 
were both alike dead and powerless to touch the heart 



The Place of Missions 1 3 

of the worshipper or the thinker. Both roused them- 
selves again to new life and energy. The age of the 
Antonines and Hypatia was still to come. Into the 
midst of this stagnant calm came a little Child to lead 
them and to bring them to the pure spring of living 
water flowing down the Mount of God. He came to 
the Jews only and the Jews rejecting Him, God " lifted 
Him up that He might draw all men unto Him." 

A gradual forgetting and subtle perversion of the 
Memories of Paradise; one race alone recording ac- 
curately and this by dint of many revelations the 
promise of the Messiah and the History of Mankind; 
this one race degraded, captive, oppressed, scattered 
and despised, almost forgetting and wholly perverting 
in their idea the Messianic mission ; this is the apparent 
summary of events preceding the first Coming of Our 
Lord. Our Lord came when truth was all but defeated 
and blotted out. 

We turn now to the story of the reclaiming of the 
nations. Gradually Roman, Greek, Celt and Saxon are 
drawn within the magic radius of the Cross of Christ. 
In outline the following pages sketch this progress to 
the Reformation. The account brings out most mar- 
velously the dignity and the power of the missionary's 
office. For the Roman, the Greek, the Celt, and the 
Teuton, the true statesmen have been their mission- 
aries. No other set of men have done what they have 



14 The Planting of the Church 

done from a merely worldly standpoint, while from the 
Heavenly, their reward is yet to come, for ever over and 
above the sweetness of the present reward given to 
those who work for God, is the glory of the triumph 
when the King returns. 



CHAPTER II 

THE OFFICE OF MISSIONS AND THE PLANTING OF THE 
APOSTLES 

In looking over the nearly nineteen centuries 
christian of the Christian era, two great facts stand 

civilization ' & 

defined ou t \fa e gjgn p 0S ts on the road from Yester- 
day to Now. First, that what we call civil- 
ization was not in existence before the influence of 
Christianity.* All forms and types of civilization in 
the ages before Christ worked from the top down- 
wards. The civilization of to-day, ever since Our 
Blessed Saviour came among us as " one that serveth," 
works from the bottom up. The second fact is that 
until this latter part of the nineteenth century, 
msepar- the acceptance of Christianity by a people has 
religion preceded and been the motive power of its 
adopting Christian civilization. Only in these 
latter days have men deliberately attempted the experi- 
ment of giving our civilization to a people without its 
source, Christ. 



* See M. Guizot's " History of European Civilization," Lect 
II, where he contrasts the civilization of Europe with that of all 
prior civilizations. 

15 



1 6 The Planting of the Church 

In this spread of Christianity we find great 
Son"©™" eras °* Church extension alternating with 
forces eras of assimilation, this twofold form of 

progress being simultaneous with the ad- 
vance and settlement of civilization. Each of these eras 
plays its own part in human progress. There is for in- 
stance the period of extension ; new regions, new races 
are put in touch with the revivifying power of the Cross 
of Christ. Then comes the period of assimilation; at 
the old centers men readjust themselves to a new flush 
of life caused by the new ideas brought to the surface 
through the flowing back to them of the new life and 
ideas of the fresh races reached by the missionary, 
while at these outposts of civilization the overflow of 
Christian thought and living from the established cen- 
ters refine and organize these undeveloped forms of 
Society bringing them into subjection to the new man- 
hood in Christ Jesus. To exemplify this: During 

the Apostolic age Jewish, Greek, Roman, and 
Examples Egyptian thought were penetrated by the 

showing 

thi8 same " new doctrine " of their own old 

truths. The pressure of their amalgamation 
into the unity of the Christian Faith brought about the 
period of the Ecumenical Councils when the various 
forms of heresy caused by differing national com- 
prehension of Our Lord's nature were disposed of. 
Again the energy and vigour of barbaric individualism 
reached by the missionaries of the Middle Ages, trick- 



The Office of Missions 1 7 

ling through the hardening forms of medieval cus- 
tom, ended in the splitting up and temporary devasta- 
tion of the Reformation. It was not only the revival of 
Greek learning following on the fall of Constantinople, 
which brought about the age of Luther. This was 
indeed the flint, but the steel on which the spark was 
struck was the metal of the people; and that metal 
had been fusing into itself, through the great medium 
of missionary intercourse all through the centuries, new 
elements of race and national originality and inde- 
pendence. From the time of Boniface of Germany to 
the conversion of the last of the Slavic races on the 
shores of the Baltic, one barbaric tribe after another 
had come under the sway of the Cross of Christ and 
under its sway had given to, as well as received from, 
the " motif " forces of the world. Their intense indi- 
vidualism had a very deep effect on the character of 
central Europe, deeper so than is realized. The very 
name of a large part of Germany belonged once to a 
tribe Slavic not German by race. " Prussian " means 
a tribe of the Letto-Lithuanians absorbed by the con- 
quering German. And the conquering German went 
everywhere with the converting Bishops. Church and 
State hand in hand. This fusion was further com- 
pleted by the international life of the Crusades. It 
was this combined genius of the people, speaking 
through such men as Wiclifr", John Huss, and Luther, 
joined to the scholastic element new fired by the re- 



1 8 The Planting of the Church 

naissance, but finding more self-contained utterance 
in Erasmus and the Church of England, which caused 
the Reformation. It made the stream of public thought 
so mighty that it burst all bounds of habit and washed 
away the dust of custom and decay and made a new era 
possible for mankind. 

What the effect will be in our own times 

Future re- . . «.,.,.,.. 

suits of when the conservative Asiatic and the child- 
present- . 

Je&SSon ^k e African and island tribes come into line 
with the march of progress, is certainly a 
question of deep interest. This is the more so because 
their coming is at an hour when conservatism and child- 
like simplicity are the elements most needed, not for a 
Reformation, but a Restoration, of much which in the 
indiscriminating zeal of " The Reformation " was lost 
and scattered. It is a striking fact that in 
The work Asia and in Africa it is again the missionary 

of the mis- 

sionary w h } s forming the connecting link and bring- 
ing the inner life of the people to the gaze of 
the civilized world. Neither commerce nor travel has 
done what the missionary has done. Both commerce 
and travel are for a limited number, and a circumscribed 
set of ideas, whose key note is selfishness. The mis- 
sionary on the other hand has it as his special object 
and responsibility to the hundreds who send him, to 
return to them a faithful and vivid picture of the life 
and men to whom he is sent, so strengthening their 
sympathy and love. He brings to the heathen the 



The Office of Missions 1 9 

choicest of Christian thought and ideal. He brings it 
from " the people " whose messenger he is, he brings 
it to " the people " to whom he is sent. Not to a class 
or to individuals, but to all. 

We see, therefore, that the office of missions has been 
one and the same in the present as in the past. Weld- 
ing together again in one the children of God who are 
scattered abroad, the missionary has opened up coun- 
tries, preserved the literature and written the language 
of countless peoples. He has been the medium of in- 
tercourse between past and present, between Barbarian 
and civilization, in every age and quarter of the world. 
Let us now consider the special part and 
pia£ting C lesson of the Apostolic and ante-nicene years 

and auc- r . . . . ,_, . , , 

ce»s of missionary activity, i his may be taken to 

close with the Council of Nicea and the es- 
tablishment of Christianity as the religion of the Ro- 
man Empire. 

In the first place what was the test of numerical 
strength, numbers being the great criterion of our 
times as to success, at the close of this period when 
Christianity was legally established? Quoting from 
Bishop Lightfoot's admirable analysis of it, we may 
take it as 1-150 of the population of the then known 
world, and 1-20 of the Roman Empire. This last is 
rather less than the estimate of Gibbon who cannot cer- 
tainly be accused of over-estimating the importance of 



20 The Planting of the Church 

Christian influence. The present proportion is very 
different.* With a far better knowledge of the 
inhabitants of the corners of the earth this is now 
stated to be one- third of the 1,100,000,000 people on 
this globe. This change in proportion should be con- 
sidered in connection with the necessary slow- 
siowness of ness of the propagation of Christianity. It 
christian- me ans individual action on the part of every 
soul in each generation. It is not a step taken 
except temporarily by parents for their children. Each 
man by himself and for himself passes into the army of 
Christ crucified. If this entails slowness of progress, 
it also entails thoroughness both in the admission of 
new races and in the building up of hereditary charac- 
ter in generation after generation. Each individuality 
is quickened by a new and distinct impression made 
in accordance with his own nature. This preserves 
originality and verity of type. Where this individual 
character has been ignored by wholesale baptisms and 
conversions without convictions, there has followed the 
infliction of heathenism and unchanged ideas on the 
Church. Pantheism, Ancestor worship, Egyptian no- 
tions of the inherent evil of matter and the greater 
virtue of celibacy all were brought into the Church in 



*It is interesting to notice that Bp. Lightfoot writing in 1873 
placed the proportion of Christians as one-fifth. Dean Farrar 
preaching before the S. P. G. in 1883 puts it at one-fourth. An 
estimate in 1896 since universally adopted gives it as one-third. 



The Office of Missions 2 1 

undigested masses to break out in similar errors within 
the Church under Christian names and titles. 

Leaving the question of individualism and numbers, 
many lessons may be learned from the teaching of the 
Apostolic missionaries for the guidance of our own. 
The teaching is often new to the men of those days, 
while again it has an old familiar sound, as of things 
heard in the childhood of their race when man was 
young, fresh from the creative hand of God. It was 
new, in that it preached a new civilization based upon 
Unselfishness and Eternity instead of Self-interest and 
Temporality. It was old in that it appealed to the oldest 
and simplest truths of life and living. It was new also 
in its reversal of all received ideas and customs. Its 
first change was the position of woman — 
re h g a a n rf t? " Woman, behold thy son : Son, behold thy 

woman's 1 »» t 1 • a i 1 • 

position mother ushered in a new era. And yet this 
new era was but a return to the old old days 
when Eve was made a helpmeet for Adam. The sen- 
tence of our Lord to S. John upon the Cross we find 
given a practical interpretation in the next glimpse 
which we have in the Acts, of the daily life of the Dis- 
ciples. They waited in the " upper room with the 
women," an utterly anti-Jewish custom. This is fur- 
ther expanded into the working of men and women 
side by side in the efforts of Church extension. Women 
as well as men workers, women as well as men martyrs 
for their common Saviour. The man was no longer 



22 The Planting of the Church 

without the woman or the woman without the man in 

the Lord. The second change was the high ideal for 

human attainment held up without class dis- 

Establish- . r 

men * of . tinction. Not the breaking down of class but 

one ideal ° 

au^iasLfr" tne establishment of one standard of charac- 
ter-perfection in each and every class. One 
measure of perfectness for the slave and the emperor 
alike based on fidelity to the respective duties of their 
stations. Christ is preached the King of Glory and the 
Servant of His Brethren. Government is made re- 
sponsible; Servitude is made faithful; Charity binds 
all. 

The Apostolic method of carrying on work is also 
worthy of attention, namely, its reiteration. The center 
of their labours is the ellipse of the Mediterranean. 
Passing in the order of our Lord's command " begin- 
ning at Jerusalem, through Judea to Samaria the Apos- 
tles sally forth to go to all the world." But the ter- 
ritory most thoroughly gone over during one genera- 
tion was bounded by the shores of the Mediterranean. 
S. Paul travels into Spain, according to his 
^Jcfated 8 " intention expressed in his Epistle to the Ro- 
Aposties mans and probably to Britain, (if we take 
the phrase S. Clement uses of him, " Farthest 
west " in the then acceptation of the term, which in- 
cluded that island). S. Mark is busy in Egypt found- 
ing his great catechetical school at Alexandria, where 
for the next three hundred years was the brightest spot 



The Office of Missions 23 

of Christian learning and instruction. Its great succes- 
sion of teachers — Pantaenus, Athenagoras, Clement 
and Origen — paved the way for the great Athanasius. 
Egypt in the early days of B. C. had given to the world 
the brightest heathen civilization, learning, language, 
literature, architecture, so now in the dawn of Chris- 
tianity Northern Africa again comes to the front and 
until the " Sturm and Drang " of the Donatist schism, 
is the bright and not the " Dark Continent " of the 
world. S. James we associate with Jerusalem. S. 
Thaddeus with Babylonia as also S. Peter. S. Andrew 
belongs in legend to Russia and China. S. Thomas* 
to India. Traces of Christian teaching were found in 
Mexico and Peru by the first white settlers, but their 
source is unknown. These are some of the traces which 
we have of Apostolic footsteps scattering the seed 
broadcast in the land. The center is the Mediterran- 
ean; that ellipse, alike in shape to the ancient symbol 
of the Church forms the rallying point for missionary 
activity and Church teaching, f Here over and over 

* There is a legend that S.Thomas came to China and America. 
See Schoolcraft's " Manners and Customs of the Indians," p. 80; 
also Bancroft's History of America. See also Article " South 
America," for account of ocean currents from Chinese coasts to 
Peru. 

f We hear in Italy on Lake Orta of a certain S. Julius who 
came in 379 from Greece to convert the natives of the district. 
There on the little island of S. Giulio his body is still supposed to 
be preserved, and the memory of that earnest man of 1600 years 
ago still lives. What have some of the so called greatest men of 



24 The Planting of the Church 

again travel S. Paul's never- wearying feet preaching, 
visiting and " confirming " the Churches he founded in 
and around this area. This "confirming of the 
Churches " brings out another characteristic of all mis- 
sionary work prior to the Reformation: the follow- 
ing and refollowing on the steps of the missionary by 
the Bishop. The Apostolic succession of the Priest- 
hood is not more unbroken than the line of laying on 
of hands on the. laity of the Church. 

To pass to other points. Lessons in lines 
argu 8 mints of argument with the nations then converted 

with unbe- , , ., 

lievers would not be amiss for the study of modern 
missionaries. The line of argument followed 
by S. Peter and S. Stephen with the Jews as well as 
the other sermons to them recorded in the Acts, form a 
mine of wealth for Jewish controversy, while S. Paul's 
method with the Gentiles is equally striking. His 
seizing of the " Common ground," the fundamental 
truth-fact in their religion, on which to build the con- 
sequent Christian Doctrine is most suggestive.* A 



the earth more than this simple faithful servant of God? The 
conversion of Italy belongs to the Apostolic period, therefore 
while in date this is later, it practically belongs to this chapter. 

* See Pascal's maxim in his " Pensees " " Quand on vent 
reprendre avec utilite, et montrer a un autre qu'il se trompe, il 
faut observer par quel cote il envisage la la chose, car elle est 
vraie ordinairement, de ce cote la, et lui avouer cette verite, mais 
lui decouvrir le cote par ou elle, est fausse. II se contente de 
cela, oar il voit qu'il ne se trompait pas, et qu'il manquait seule- 
ment a voir tous les cotes. Or, on ne se fache pas de ne pas 



The Office of Missions 25 

striking contrast to the modern religious iconoclast 
who first destroys all preconceived notions and on their 
dreary void attempts to plant a " new " truth. Not 
so S. Paul, " Him whom ye already ignorantly worship 
Him declare we unto you." What a contrast to the 
modern account of a certain Mr. Jones, missionary to 
the Indians in North America, who went among them 
absolutely ignorant of their thoughts or customs and 
even of their language. He preached by an interpreter 
and by a sort of brute insistence won quite a number 
of converts, but his ignorance led him to transgress 
so many of their customs that his life was constantly 
in danger and Christianity much imperiled. 

There is however a warning from even 
Mistakes this Apostolic age against mistakes men may 
period make no matter how earnestly striving. The 

danger there is in the finding and building on 
the " Common ground " of going too far, and taking as 
that ground things not in themselves true. A most 
striking example is seen of this in the introduction of 
hermit life into the Church. Utter and entire consecra- 
tion of self is of course the germ-truth it contains, but 
this expression of it was taken from the Egyptian wor- 
ship of Isis and Osiris. There for hundreds of years 
hermits had sought in the cells about Egyptian tem- 



tout voir. Mais on vient de ce que naturellement 1' homme ne 
peut tout voir, et de ce que naturellement il ne se peut tromper 
dans le cote qu'il envisage; comme, le apprehensions des sens 
sont toujours vraies." 



26 The Planting of the Church 

pies to express their fullest soul devotion by a life of 
" Solitariness; " and there in Egypt we see the her- 
mit idea taken into the Church, Simon Stylites and 
his comrades " leaving the world " for a pillar begin 
a long line of religious " Solitarys " and " Hermits." 
Contrast with this the Prayer of Our Lord, " I pray 
not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, 
but that Thou shouldest keep them from the Evil." 
The story of these Egyptian hermits set up by the 
Church in Egypt was brought by Athanasius to Gaul 
when he was banished to Treves and there took root in 
the form of Monasticism. This was a withdrawal from 
the world, but quickened by the companionship of com- 
munity life. It began in the meeting of S. Martin of 
Tours with S. Athanasius. He heard the story of this 
form of self devotion in Egypt and his ardent magnetic 
nature was stirred to begin for himself and his com- 
panions the great monastic settlement of Marmoutiers. 
His wonderful personality gave it popularity and left 
Monasticism a system firmly established, destined to 
become one of the ruling influences of the middle 
ages. Thus it came about that what S. Paul advocated 
" by permission but not by commandment " as " good 
for the stress of the times " in those days of severe 
persecution became in the thought of the Church the 
highest expression of a " devoted," " religious " life. 
Good it did undoubtedly, as all absolute consecration 



The Office of Missions 27 

does, but it was a good strongly mixed with evil as 
later history showed. 

The final lesson of these Apostolic ages 
sonnSTof is found in the study of the men who did the 

Apostolic 

Sii©« ion " work. Who were they? One or two only 
of the Apostles themselves even, are known 
to us in certainty. A few names beyond and then we 
come to a vast army of the unknown. From the sacred 
narrative in the Acts and the Epistles we have the 
only hint to go by. Christianity seems to have spread 
more from man to man, from house to house. It spread 
like a contagion. Among the martyrs, men, women, 
and children,* are found of every station and degree of 
life. Not only the leaders are esteemed dangerous but 
every member also was regarded as a center of propa- 
gation. The names of those who passed along the 
northern shores of Africa, making the Egyptian and the 
Coptic Church, the record of those who wended their 
way along the southern shores of France and up the fer- 
tile valleys of the rivers to Lyons and Vienna, to Mar- 
seilles, to Tours and Paris, are all unknown to us. One 
or two only stand out as examples, the main body are 
lost in the obscurity of the past. It was such a com- 
mon thing for a Christian to be a missionary that no 
one thought of remembering it.t The same is true as to 

* Many are the records of childlife laid down in martyrdom as 
witness to the Holy Child. 

fThe American Church returned in theory to this Apostolic 



28 The Planting of the Church 

the beginning of the British Church. We conjecture 
only and have only " probability " to lead us to guess 
who were some of the most prominent of its founders. 
And yet as early as 314 this British Church sends three 
of its Bishops to the Council of Aries. " Ye are to be 
witnesses of me," " To witness with us the Resurrec- 
tion." Such seems to have been the primal keynote of 
Christianity. And the result? " The "Church grew," 
" added to daily," establishing itself quietly and noise- 
lessly, naturally as a seed grows, from man to man, 
from woman to woman, until when Constantine came to 
the Imperial purple, Christianity was a power to be 
used or reckoned with. " It was the strength of Chris- 
tianity in Gaul and England which put this young 
Caesar on the throne." Says Dr. Maclear, " The final 
struggle " between Christendom and classical pagan- 
ism was in " reality fought out on Gallic soil. The 
strength of Christianity in the land which had been 
moistened with the blood of the martyrs of Vienne and 
Lyons made Constantine declare himself a Christian." 
It is Gaul and the West which gave the Church to 
the Roman Empire and not Rome which handed on 
the Church to the world. In Rome itself " the Church 
for the first three centuries was an exotic." It was 



custom in its famous convention of 1835 when " Every baptized 
person in the Church " was declared to be " a member of the 
missionary society — The Church ; " bounden in duty by baptism 
to be a missionary in gifts of self, of substance or of both. 



The Office of Missions 29 

Greek not Roman. Its very language was Greek, the 
names of all its early Bishops are Greek not Roman 
names, and its members were mostly among the settled 
Greek population. The old Roman families prided 
themselves on their constant paganism; their faithful- 
ness to the " Lares and Penates " of their forefathers. 
But this is a digression, we must return to those early 
missionaries, the sheep of the flock scattered and scat- 
tering abroad. 

r>ean The ^ U ^ results of this first missionary 

Snima^r epoch are so well summed up by Dean Church 

of this in his book the " Gifts of Civilization " in re- 
period 

spect to the Greek and Roman races that it 
will not be amiss to quote at length. For the Greek, 
he says : " The Roman conquest of the world found 
the Greek race and the eastern nations which it had in- 
fluenced in a low, and declining state — morally, so- 
cially, politically. * * * What saved Greek na- 
tionality, saved it in spite of the terrible alliance with 
external misfortunes of its own deep and inherent evils ; 
saved it, I hope, for much better days than it ever yet 
has seen — was its Christianity. * * * Christianity 
was the first friend and benefactor of an illustrious race 
in the day of its decline and low estate: The Greek 
race has never forgotten that first benefit, and its un- 
wavering loyalty has been the bond which has kept 
the race together and saved it. 



30 The Planting of the Church 

" I think this is remarkable. Here is a race full of 
flexibility and resource, with unusual power of ac- 
commodating itself to circumstance, and ready to do 
so when its interest prompted, not over-scrupulous, 
quick in discovering imposition and pitiless in laugh- 
ing at pretence. A race made, as it would seem, to 
bend easily to great changes, and likely, we should 
have thought to lose its identity and be merged in a 
stronger and sterner political association. And to this 
race Christianity has imparted a corporate toughness 
and permanence which is among the most prominent 
facts of history. * * * That easygoing, pliable, 
childishly changeable Greek race at whom the Roman 
sneered has proved through the deepest misfortunes, 
one of the most inflexible nationalities that we know of ; 
and the root of this permanence and power of resisting 
hostile influences has been in Christianity and the 
Christian Church." The Dean goes on to show the 
force of the Christian ideas of " The eternal and Ever- 
lasting," the " Christian idea of Brotherhood " and 
the " Christian idea of Hope " on this same Greek race 
and the record in the light of recent events in Armenia 
is a remarkable one to say the least. 

Take next the Roman race. The quotation is too 
long to give in words but the idea is this. That out 
of a nation whose might was built upon the foundation 
of Laws and of Brute force with no place recognized 



The Office of Missions 3 1 

for the affections, the imagination, or for the physically 
feeble has come the blossoming of the Italian char- 
acter overflowing with imagination, with affection, 
with a civilization in which strength of arm and muscle 
has had less to do than with any national type on the 
earth to-day. 

" Who touched in these Latin races the hidden vein 
of tenderness, the 'fount of tears/ the delicacies and 
courtesies of mutual kindness, the riches of art and 
the artist's earnestness? Who did all this * * * 
in the spoiled and hardened children of an exhausted 
and ruined civilization ? Can there be any question as 
to what produced this change? 

" It was the conversion of these races to the faith 
of Christ. The Latin races learned it in the community 
of conviction and hope, in the community of suffering, 
between the high born and the slave — they learned 
it when they met together at the place of execution, 
in the blood-stained amphitheater, in the crowded 
prison house, made musical with the sweet solemnities 
of gratitude and praise, with the loving and high- 
hearted farewells of resignation and patience: They 
learned it in the catacombs, at the graves of the mar- 
tyrs, in the Eucharistic feast, in the sign of the Re- 
deemer's Cross, in the kiss of peace : They learned it 
in that service of perpetual prayer in which early Latin 
devotion gradually found its expression and embodied 



32 The Planting of the Church 

its faith. * * * They learned it in that new social 
interest, that reverence and compassion and care for 
the poor, which beginning in the elder scriptures in 
the intercessions of the Psalms for the poor and needy 
and in the Prophetic championship of their cause 
against pride and might, had become, since the Sermon 
on the Mount, the characteristic of Christ's religion. 
* * * Imagine a Roman of the old world making 
the sign of the Cross. * * * Making it as a 
Dante or Savonarola might do it ! " 

The faithful out of the fickle Greek, the kind out of 
the cruel Roman, these are two of the great changes 
wrought by Christianity. The civilization which 
brought the almshouse, the hospital, the public school, 
and best of all The Church with its spiritual instead of 
carnal worship, this is the civilization of Christianity. 
To this glimpse of Greek and Roman metamorphosis, 
we may add the change of Jewish character where 
Christ has won its life, making out of the exclusive 
Pharisee the inclusive S. Paul. This is perforce the 
effect on the Jew when he realizes the full meaning of 
the words of God to Abraham, " In thee shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed," so that S. Paul prophe- 
sies that the final ingathering of the Gentile world is 
waiting for the Jewish Missionary. 

Here however we come to a pause. With the proc- 
lamation of Christianity by Constantine and freedom 



The Office of Missions 33 

from persecution, over the center of the Roman empire 
falls the veil of rest, and the period of assimilation 
ensues when, in the great Councils of the Church, the 
doctrines and the definitions of the faith once delivered 
find time to crystalize themselves in words. To the 
Church Historian belongs this period, for the tension 
of thought during the fusion of Greek and Roman ideas 
blunted missionary effort and with the exception of the 
work of Ulphilas among the Goths, the work of Church 
extension was exchanged for the making of definitions 
of Church intension. 

To follow the missionary we must now go to Ire- 
land, with the Celtic Church seek the advance banners 
of Christendom, and live in thought for the next two 
hundred years, among the people and the customs of 
early Ireland and Britain, and wander through the 
shades of German forest life. The work of the first 
three centuries is done. The forces started, the lessons 
preached, the workers vanished. And while the Coun- 
cils of the Church hold attention at the center we 
will turn our eyes to the outposts and see how they 
fare : See how new people take the truths that wrought 
such mighty changes in the old empire that left them 
outside of its political life. 



34 The Planting of the Church 



TABLE of the u First Missionaries" and the Countries 
Associated with them by fact or tradition. 



Name 



S. Matthew , 

S. Mark , 

S.Luke 

S.John 

S. Peter 

S. Andrew 

S. James, Son of Zebedee. 

S.Philip 

S. Bartholomew 

S. Thomas 

S. James, Son of Alpheus . 

S. Thaddeus or Jude 

S. Simon, the Canaanite. . 

S. Matthias 

S.Paul 

S. Philip, the Deacon . . . ) 
S. Barnabas 

" Other seventy also " 



Place 



Egypt and Ethiopia 

Lybia, Thebais, Founder of School at Alexan- 
dria 
Greece and Egypt 
India, Asia-Minor, Ephesus 
Judea, Babylonia 

Scythia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Russia 
Judea, Spain 
Scythia 

India, Armenia, Cilicia 
India (where he baptized the wise men I ) 
First Bishop of Jerusalem 

i Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia 

Judea 

Italy, Greece, Macedonia, Spain, England 

Samaria, Azotus to Cassarea 

Asia-Minor, Greece, Italy (first Bishop of Greece, 

Legendary) 
Who, during our Lord's life, preached in every 

city and village whither he, himself, would 



The Office of Missions 



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36 The Planting of the Church 



WOMEN Workers of Apostolic Days. 



Place 


Name 


Athens 


Damaris 




Four Daughters of Philip, the Deacon 




Phoebe 




Chloe and her Household 


Corinth 


Priscilla 


Ephesus 


Apphia 


Jerusalem 


Rhnria, "A Da.rnsfil " 


Joppa 


Dorcas 


Lystra and Derbe. 
Philippi 


Eunice i Motner and Grandmother of S. Timothy 
Euodia and Syntyche 


Rome 


Claudia (supposed to be a British Princess, daughter 

of Caractacus) 
Julia 
Mary 
\ The Mother of Rufus and S, Paul 


Thessalonica 

Thyatira 


Nereus' Sister 

Persis 

Tryphena 
. Tryphosa 

" The Chief Women " 
Lydia 
" The Elect Lady," A friend of S. John 


Unknown 







The Office of Missions 



37 



ADDITIONAL List of Men who "Laboured in the Lord:' 



PliACB 


Name 


Athens 


Dionysius the Areopagite 


Antioch 


( Simeon ) 

< Manaen >■ Prophets and Teachers 

( Lucius ) 

Men of Cyprus and Cyrene preach to Grecians at 

Those scattered by S. Stephen's persecution preach to 

Jews at 
Cornelius the Centurion and his kinsfolk and ac- 


Antioch 


Antioch 


Ceesarea 


Caesarea . . . , 


quaintance 
Agabus 


Colosse 


Colosse 




Corinth 


Aquila 

Justus 

Crispus 

Lucius ) 

Jason > Kinsmen of S. Paul 

Sopater ) 

Tertius 

Erastus, Chamberlain of the City 

Quartus, a Soldier 

Fortunatus 

Achaicus 

Epaphras 

Nymphas and the " Church at His House " 

Archippus 

Titus (Bishop) 


Crete 


Damascus 


Derbe and Lystra. 
Ephesus 


Timothy (later Ephesus) 
" Chief of Asia " 


Galatia 


Apollos 
Tyrannus 
Trophimus 
Onesiphorus' Household 


Jerusalem 


( Judas ) 


Joppa 

Macedonia 

Nicopolis 


\ Silas | 

Simon the Tanner 

Erastus 

Zenas the Lawyer 

Artemas 

Apollos 

Sergius Paulus, Proconsul 


Paphos 


Philippi 


Rome 


Epaphroditus 

Epaenetus 

Aristarchus 

Demas " Fell from Christ " 

Tychicus 

Stephanus' Household (Epeenetus a member of it) 

Andronicus ) 

Junius >• Kinsmen of S. Paul 

Herodion ) 





38 The Planting of the Church 



ADDITIONAL List of Men who "Laboured in the Lord: 1 



Place 



Thessalonica 
Troas , 



Name 



Aristobulus' Household 

Narcissus' Household 

Urbane 

Stachys 

Apelles 

Rufus 

Asyncritus 

Phlegon 

Hermes 

Patroclus 

Hermas 

Philologus 

Nereus 

Olympas 

Sosthenes 

Silvanus 

Crispus 

Eupulus Pudens (supposed to be Pudeus, son of a 

Roman Senator) 
Linus (supposed to be Llin, son of Caractacus, a Briton) 
Jason 
Eutychus 

Gaius ) "Mine Host" also mentioned with A. as 

Aristarchus J " My Companions in Travels " S. Paul 
Demetrius, Friend of S. John 



CHAPTER III 



THE CELTIC PERIOD 



The Missionary may be said to deal with nations, the 
Church with individuals. This is strikingly exempli- 
fied as we turn our eyes upon the Celts and their con- 
version, as well as on their office of missionaries in the 
Church of Christ. S. Patrick, missionary to Ireland, 
changed the whole character of its History. The Celtic 

missionary, in his turn, has changed the char- 
^flue^ d of acter of many nations. France, Germany, 
missionary Switzerland, Pomerania, Scotland, Wales, as 

well as Ireland are under debt to S. Pat- 
rick. After conversion their own national type was 
deepened, intensified, and drawn out of self to universal 
brotherliness by their effort to evangelize others. 

It was fiwe hundred years before Christ when 
Entrance history came in contact with the Celt. 

of the Celt J 

lor? 1118 " Then, for the first time, his fierce rugged 
features peered over the walls of Rome. He 
came and went like a dream in the night to Northern 
Italy, in those far off days. Two hundred years later 
the " dream " returns, and again and again it troubles 

39 



40 The Planting of the Church 

the sleep of the farming Roman, till finally about fifty 
years B. C, Augustus in sheer self defence organized 
their wild hordes into a colony in what was henceforth 
called Galatia. To these people nearly a century later 
S. Paul went as missionary and the Galatians became 
the first Celtic Church.* 

At least, in the uncertainty of such far off history, 

this is one of the theories held by scholars. Certainly 

if we open S. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and read 

it, having in mind the present Celts we know, 

The Gaia- the Irish, with their earnest fickleness, plausi- 

tiang the ' ' r 

churcb ltic bility and superstition, their pagan faith in 
times and seasons, it acquires a force and 
meaning not perceived before. It reads as a letter writ- 
ten to them to-day and is a marvelous commentary on 
the toughness and permanency of racial character. 
" Oh foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you that 
ye are so soon turned away from him that called you 
to the grace of Christ unto another Gospel." One can 
almost fancy S. Patrick turning in his grave to say it to 
the Irishman of to-day, should he hear him mumbling 
his prayers to S. Francis or the Virgin instead of to 
Our Saviour. 

The Celts that sturdy Saint found in Ireland 
irishman were given to nature worship in its simplest 

£112 Q t-X&lfl." 

pa"ed om " t> ut m ost superstitious form, and the Gauls 
of Asia seem, from S. Paul's Epistle, to 
* See Dr. Maclear's " Celts." 



The Celtic Period 41 

have been very like their far off brethren. " When ye 
knew not God ye did service to them which by nature 
are no gods. But now after ye have known God or 
rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the 
weak and beggarly elements whereunto ye desire again 
to be in bondage." Again " Ye observe days and 
months and times and years ! " How like the Irish with 
their " lucky " and " unlucky " days. The old Irish 
dreaded the power of woman as that of a " witch " or 
" evil one." S. Paul refutes all this with his " Christ 
born of a woman." Then their eager devotion, how he 
memorizes this when he says, " I bear you record that 
if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your 
own eyes and have given them to me." This Epistle 
to the Celts with its account of S. Peter's frailty, the 
uselessness of works apart from faith, the intention 
of God in Christ to have us live to him 
as we were made, reads to-day with new force 
when taken in connection with the Celtic char- 
acter and the corruptions of the Roman Church 
in Ireland. We can almost hear him say, " my 
little children," (the Celt is ever childlike) " of whom I 
travail in birth again until Christ be found in you." 
Not Mary, not Joseph, not this or that Saint, but Christ. 
Or again : " But if ye bite and devour one another ! " 
Think of poor fighting troubled Ireland. " Take heed 
that ye be not consumed one of another." 



42 The Planting of the Church 



S. Paul 



Having caught a glimpse of the continuity 
ami s? 1 and persistency of Celtic character, let us now 

Patrick , _ , . - , . 

compared turn to the story not of the conversion of the 
eastern but the western Celt. What S. Paul 
was to the west of his day, S. Patrick was to the west of 
four hundred years later. Yet the training of the two 
men was utterly dissimilar. S. Paul, to work among 
the educated races, was born and educated from earliest 
childhood in all the cultivation of his time. S. Patrick, 
born of Christian parents, living with them in a Chris- 
tian home until his first childhood was past, was taken 
a slave to live the years of most intense impression on 
character, as a swineherd to an Irish chief. There on 
the hills, in the poverty and under the stars of Ireland, 
his soul received that training in solitude which was to 
make him the shepherd of many souls. As David was 
trained in the folds of Israel to be the leader of Judah, 
S. Patrick had his character disciplined by the care 
of the wild pig of Ireland. Energy, promptitude, pa- 
tience and invention were well trained and developed. 
But that was not all. In his absence from home and 
kindred he learned to know his Saviour. The discipline 
of life made him Christ's disciple. He was the slave 
of Milchu — he became the freedman of Christ. It is 
one of the romances of all time, this life of S. Patrick. 
After some years he escaped from slavery 
Life of s. anc * returned to his home. Here like S. Paul 
Patrick t k e men w h om h e was called to convert 

haunted him in his dreams. The men of Hi- 



The Celtic Period 43 

bernia came and presented to him in his sleeping vis- 
ions, letters called the " voice of Ireland " crying to 
him to come and teach them. But the teacher must 
first be taught, and the young man wise in heart but 
ignorant in head traveled over seas to Tours to the 
famous monastery of Marmoutiers to learn all that the 
Gallican Church of France could teach him. One likes 
to fancy that it may have been S. Ninian who came 
from Tours to Scotland and founded Withern, (Can- 
dida Casa,) during the days of S. Patrick's slavery in 
Ireland, who inspired the youth on his return from cap- 
tivity to go to the head waters of his own wisdom, 
before embarking on the arduous task of missionary to 

the " Emerald Isle." However this may be, 
Tours in ^ et us trv to realize what were the men and 
s. Patrick events which impressed him as he went, in 

those early days, to France. S. Martin with 
all his vivid personality was still a memory. Men could 
yet recall stories of their grandfathers who had talked 
with Athanasius, banished for the faith of the Blessed 
Trinity to Treves. Here we get the secret of S. Pat- 
rick's reiteration of this theme in the works which have 
come down to us.* The other heresies had not arisen, 
or were then unknown in Gaul, when. S. Patrick was 
there; for no trace of them is visible in the Irish writ- 
ings of those days. The isolation of Ireland from the 
troublous thoughts which brought about the other great 

* See prayer of S. Patrick at close of chapter. 



44 The Planting of the Church 

councils is like the isolation of Russia in more modern 
times from the throes of the Reformation. Both coun- 
tries were outside the strife of tongues. 

At Tours S. Patrick also received those 
SSJJS impressions of Christianity which later be- 
cwcii C came characteristic of the Celtic Church. The 

great army of Bishops, the time of celebrat- 
ing Easter, the shape of the tonsure, Celtic parochial 
clergy life with homes and families, these learned in 
Gaul, followed the Celtic Church wherever it was 
planted. The Protestantism of Switzerland, of South- 
ern France, of Germany, of England, are all traceable 
to the influence of the strong feeling of " Gallican lib- 
erty " which characterized this part of the Church. 
The conflict of S. Augustine with the Celtic Church is 
but in anticipation of the reformation. It is the Gal- 
lican element of English Christianity that is at the 
bottom of the independence of the English Church. 
One result of the vast number of Bishops consecrated 
in Ireland was the sallying forth of many of them to 
foreign shores to conquer Dioceses in heathen lands. 
This is still the characteristic of the English Church. 
Her Bishops are her pioneer missionaries. 

From Gaul then, not Rome, came S. Patrick 
s. Patrick to Ireland. He never went to Rome. He was 
man °" made Deacon, Priest, and Bishop in Gaul. 

He never received the Pallium, a gift not then 
invented, and in all his writings as in all other writings 



The Celtic Period 45 

of that day, there is not one word of Mariolatry in any 
form whatsoever or worship of Saints : Only " Christ 
and the power of the Blessed Trinity." 

It was after several years of training, no 
s.Patrick longer young, that S. Patrick with several 

as mis- 
sionary followers set out on his long-planned enter- 
prize. His first object was the conversion of 
Milchu, his old master. With him, as propitiatory in- 
troduction, he bore his ransom money to pay first his 
debt of freedom won by flight so long ago. But his old 
master was too proud to be taught by his former slave 
(whether he was too proud to take the money is not 
told us, but we must remember he was an Irish land- 
lord) and S. Patrick had that share of failure which 
mingles with all success. One after one the other Irish 
chieftains were converted. One by one the great Irish 
monasteries were founded — centers of learning and 
civilization. 

The Celtic women also were aroused. S. 
Ho a rk e of nd Bridget, a converted slave, built several 
women houses to help the work of the men and began 
for Christianity that characteristic of Celtic 
religion under the Druids, the co-partnership of men 
and women for the religious work of the world. S. 
Patrick in Ireland, S. Boniface in Germany, can tell 
with S. Paul of the women who laboured with me in 
the Gospel. 



46 The Planting of the Church 

One of the great causes of S. Patrick's success was 
his knowledge of the Irish language, learned in 
his long tedious years of pigherding on the 
hills of Dalaradia. Though Milchu was not con- 
verted, Dilchu, a near neighbour of his, and 
of high birth, was, and from the country about 
Sliabhmis* the faith began to spread. Only one of the 
stories of the many successes of the Saint can be re- 
lated here; that of the Druid King Laoghaire at Tara. 
" The legend is that it was Easter Eve when 
_ ^ A . _ S. Patrick reached the neighbourhood of 

S. Patrick & 

at Tara Tara. He erected a tent and made prepara- 
tions for spending the night with his com- 
panions. As the smoke of the fire he had kindled arose 
it was noticed by the Druids in the King's Court and 
caused the utmost consternation. To kindle any fire 
during the solemn assembly of the chiefs, before the 
King had lighted the sacred fire in the halls of Tara, 
was a sin of the greatest enormity. Messengers were 
accordingly sent to summon the daring stranger before 
the King. S. Patrick's courage won for him the re- 
spect of Laoghaire and his nobles, so that not only did 
he proclaim his message before the King but received 
permission to carry out the great work on which he had 
set his heart, so long as he did not disturb the peace of 
the land." 



* Modern Slemish. 



The Celtic Period 47 

A great number of the chieftains were con- 
Son^? c " verted and everywhere the people received 
monument him gladly. His most important work per- 
haps was the destruction of Crom-cruach, 
" The-black-stooping-stone," the idol of King Lao- 
ghaire. This seems to have been a sort of Stonehenge 
for it was surrounded by twelve other stones and much 
reverenced by the people. The story of its overthrow 
sheds light on the destruction of Stonehenge. It was 
an act necessary to destroy its pagan power on the 
people. 

It is interesting to notice in the early stories of S. 
Patrick's missionary work that the first move was a 
question on the part of the unbeliever. He was made to 
take the initiative and then, instantly, S. Patrick's an- 
swer implied in some way the Gospel story or hinted, if 
the question was purely secular, at greater spiritual pos- 
sibilities. Invitations to talk were turned at once to high 
channels. When the two daughters of King Laoghaire 
came to ask the strangers if they were fairies, S. Pat- 
rick replied : " It were better for you to confess to our 
true God than to inquire concerning our race." This 
question of the daughters of the king shows a keen 
sense of the reality of the spiritual world. This was so 
intense in the Celtic character that the Celtic contribu- 
tion to Christianity might almost be said to be spirit- 
uality. S. Patrick, S. Columba, Bede, Thomas a 



48 The Planting of the Church 

Kempis, George Herbert, make a chain of spirituality 
essentially Celtic in nature and in grace. But with this 
grace comes a danger. Spirituality and spiritualism 
are near of kin. 

We have a warning as well as a lesson to 
warning learn from this period. S. Patrick seeing 
period the superstition of the people, and think- 
ing to " catch them with guile," made the 
mistake of giving them Christian amulets and 
charms instead of doing without such things alto- 
gether, thus raising their faith to a higher plane. One 
of these we still have. It is very beautiful and must 
be quoted but it undoubtedly strengthened the hold 
superstition had on the people and paved the way for 
the present degraded form of Christianity prevalent in 
Ireland.* There is danger of letting spirituality degen- 
erate into superstitious spiritualism. 

With S. Patrick begins the list of missionaries to and 
from the Celts. The following list of workers with 
their fields is only a small portion of the active workers 
sent out by the little Island of Ireland. 



*Any one with Irish servants has only to ask to see their books 
of devotion to prove this. 



The Celtic Period 49 



LIST of Missionaries of Irish Origin. 

1. Cadok, baptized by the Irish Monk Menthi; taught by the 

Irish Monk Tathai; studied in the Irish school at Lis- 
more. Went to South Wales. Large settlement of Irish 
scholars led by him to Llancarvon, where they have a 
learned school and monastery. After Saxon invasion re- 
treats to Amorica. Returns and is martyred at Weedon, 
N. Hampton, d. a. d. 6oi. 

2. S. David, baptized by an Irish Bishop; studied at Candida 

Casa. Went to S. Davids. " The Bishops and Clerks " 
Rocks named by the sailors in his memory. 

3. S. Cain, Irishman. Went to Cornwall. 

4. S. Piran, consecrated by S. Patrick. Went to Cornwall. 

5. S. Petroc, consecrated by S. Patrick. Went to Padstow. 

6. S. Bridget, Irish Saint. Went to many places in Wales, b. 

a. d. 521. 

7. S. Columba, Prince of Ireland and at Gartan; baptized by 

Cruithnechan, known as " Colum-Cill," " Colum of the 
Churches " from his constant churchgoing as a child ; 
priested by Etchen, Irish Bishop; Disciple of Finnian at 
Clouard. Went to Derry, Raphoe, Durrow, Kells, Lambay, 
Duncliff, Moone, Tory Island, Icolmkill, Inverness, Skye 
and North Scotland, Mull, etc. " The Polynesia of the 6th 
century." Buchan and Aberthenay. Died June 9, 597, at Hy. 

8. Corngall, Irishman. Went to Bangor. 

9. Cainnoch, Irishman. Went to Achaboe. 

10. Colman, Irishman. Went to Dalriada. d. a. d. Jan. 13, 603. 

11. Kentigern, consecrated by Irish Bishop. Went to Glasgow, 

Wales, Carlisle, Llanelwy, Dumfrieshire, Albania. 

12. Rederech, baptized in Ireland. Went to S. Asaphs. King 

and Missionary. 

13. Cormac (of the sea), Irish Prince. Went to Cumbria, Ork- 

ney Islands, Iceland. 



50 The Planting of the Church 

14. S. Donnar, Irishman, and fifty companions. Martyred on the 

Hebrides, b. a. d. Jan. 3, 642. 

15. Maelrubha, Irishman. D. 21 April, 722. Went to Apple- 

cross. 

16. Diumia, Irishman. Went to Middle Anglea, Mercia. b. a. d. 

653; <i. 706. 

17. Adamnan, Prince in Ireland. He became the first preacher 

of the Roman usage for Easter and the Tonsure in Ireland 
and pleaded for the conformity of the Celtic Church to 
continental usage but without avail. 250 years after S. 
Patrick. 9th Abbot of Iona. North Utnbria. Biographer 
of Columba, also Historian of the Eastern Church from re- 
ports of a French Bishop visiting in North Umbria. Here 
he met Ceolfrid of the Roman Mission to the Saxons. 
Great effort for union of Celtic and English Churches. 

18. Forsay and four companions from Ireland. Went to Duninch, 

England. * 



*The strength of the Celtic Church in Ireland, Scotland and 
Wales may be gathered from a glance at the following table com- 
piled from statements in Maclear's Celts. 

SITES of Churches and Monasteries perpetuated in nomen- 
clature. 

CHURCHES. MONASTERIES. 

Wales, 97 Ireland 1,400 

Cornwall, 13 Scotland "many" 

Shropshire, 7 Wales "several" 

Hereford, 4 Hebrides 3 

Gloucester, 4 Orkneys 2 

Scotland unknown number Shetlands 2 

Ireland " " Faroes "several" 

Iceland " 

125 

This is the testimony of nomenclature alone. 



The Celtic Period 



5» 



LIST of Missionaries to the Continent of Celtic or Anglo 
Celtic Origin. 



1 S. Columbanus 




France (South) 

Switzerland . . . 

[ Thuringia . . . 
< Friesland .... 

( Hessians 

( Alsatia 

■< Bavaria 

( Switzerland . 
Saxons 

j Corinthia.... 

1 Bavaria 

Norway 

Norway 

Irishman 


1 France (S) 


2 S. Gall 


715-754 




3 S. Boniface 


8 century 

8 cen 


3 

4 Germany 


4 Firmin 


5 

6 

7 


5 Lebuin 


8 cen ., 


8 Switzerland 
9 


6 S. Vigilias 


8 cen 


10 Germany 


7 Grimkild 


11 cen 


11 


Guthebald 


990 


12 Norway 


John of Mechlenburg . 




13 Wends 







These missionaries and their fields of labour were 
the actors and the scenes of the Second Conversion of 
Europe, after the invasions of the Teutons had over- 
whelmed Apostolic Christianity and the civilization of 
the Roman Empire. It will be noticed that these Celtic 
sources of present day Christianity of Europe are the 
places where Protestantism has been most readily ac- 
cepted during and since the Reformation. 

It is a fact of human nature that often- 
mto»Fon- ic times strangers influence us where our own 
England family fail. This is true also in the history 

of missions. The foreign mission or the for- 
eign missionary has an attraction which the member of 
our own household fails to excite. This was the case 
with England at this time. The Saxons of England 



52 The Planting of the Church 

offered bitter resistance to the missionaries from their 
neighbour, the Celtic Church, which was firmly planted 
among the Picts and Scots in the North. S. Colum- 
banus and S. Gall set out for Switzerland from this 
very Celtic Church and had great success there. Just 
at that moment S. Augustine, a foreign missionary 
from Rome, landed in Kent, to convert the Teutons 
who since 449 had been planting themselves all over the 
South of England. He at first reaped like success there. 
Perhaps the Celts had been despised and their teaching 
refused because these Saxons regarded them with con- 
tempt as being of the same race that, in France, had 
been conquered by their fierce Teutonic cousins. 

Almost at the very moment that S. Augustine landed, 
S. Columba was dying in far away Iona — dying in the 
midst of a generation of Celtic missionaries and settled 
Churchmen, in a land Augustine supposed wholly given 
to idolatry. There is something wonderful in this com- 
ing of the one at the moment of the exit of the other. 
It is like the coming of Elisha in the mantle of Elijah. 
And the parallel is not unhappy. The sternness of the 
latter prophet is much like the nature of Augustine, 
and the conduct of Elisha to the mocking children is 
not impossible to the later Christian Saint, as seen by 
his conduct to the venerable deputation which met him 
from the Celtic Church. His haughtiness utterly cut 
off all chance of a union at that time, but it gave oppor- 



The Celtic Period 53 

tunity for the Roman Missionary gourd to spring up, 
and flourish, and fade, till rescued from total destruc- 
tion by the Celtic missionaries coming from the north. 
In every station where at first they had such wonderful 
success, the Roman mission proved itself an " exotic " 
and except for a feeble flame in Kent might be called ex- 
tinct until the strong fresh breath of Celtic Church- 
manship blew upon the dying embers and then in the 
grand revival which followed, Celtic Church and Ro- 
man Mission were fused into the beginnings of the 
great Anglican Communion 688 A. D., and in this 
fusion, helping it on, we find the influence of the old 
Gallican source on the continent. Alcuin and S. An- 
selm are bright stars in this young Anglican Church. 
But this belongs to the Church History student. 

Let us turn our eyes to the life of the mis- 
coiumba sionary of those days. It is a pleasant pic- 
l8le ture. History repeats itself and in the pic- 

ture of Columba with his followers we are 
forcibly struck by the aptness of the term " Polynesia 
of the 6th and 7th cen." as applied to his " Iona." He 
was the Bishop Selwyn of his day with many of his 
gifts and characteristics. Nor is the proto- 
type of the martyr Bishop Patteson wanting. 
S. Donnar is there with fifty companions. 
They travel to a distant Island in the Hebri- 
des. The heathen queen comes to slay them while they 



54 The Planting of the Church 

are at service. They ask her to wait while they finish 
the Holy Communion. She assents, and when the holy 
rite is over they literally are made " partakers of His 
death," for she slays all of them. There, in one grave 
their headless bodies lie waiting for the day when 
their spiritual Head shall come again to call them. But 
the martyr is ever the greatest missionary, and many 
places in that land are named for the Holy Donnar. 
Slain in weakness their memory rises in power to gen- 
eration after generation of Christian souls. 

In the Greek and Roman progress of Christianity 
success began among the lower classes. The Celtic 
missionary on the contrary began more often with the 
king and princes, and through them converted the peo- 
ple. Yet " the two great founders of the Irish Church 
were slaves, Bridget and Patrick." The strength of 
the Celtic Church was its power of sympathy with and 
adaptation to the people. Here lies the secret of its 
success everywhere, even in England where it met 
and rectified what came near being the failure of Au- 
gustine. 

This belongs to the story of the conversion of the 
Teutons. To them now we transfer our interest and 
among the Anglo-Saxons of England, and across the 
channel in Europe, let us follow the course of the Star 
of Bethlehem as in turn it rests over each nation till 
Christ is born in their hearts by Faith. 



The Celtic Period 55 

CHRISTIAN BREASTPLATE TO PROTECT 
FROM FOES 

BY S. PATRICK 

1. I bind to myself to-day 

The strong power of an Invocation of the Trinity. 
The faith of the Trinity in Unity. 
The creator of the elements. 

2. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism. 
The power of the Crucifixion with that of His Burial. 
The power of the coming to the sentence of judgment. 

3. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of the love of Seraphim 
In the hope of Resurrection unto reward 
In the prayers of the noble fathers „ 
In the predictions of the Prophets 
In the preaching of Apostles 
In the faith of Confessors 
In the purity of Holy Virgins 
In the acts of righteous men. 

4. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of Heaven 
The light of the sun 
The whiteness of snow 
The force of fire 
The flashing of lightning 
The velocity of wind 
The depth of the sea 
The stability of the earth 
The hardness of rocks. 



56 The Planting of the Church 

5. I bind to myself to-day 

The Power of God to guide me 

The Might of God to uphold me 

The Wisdom of God to teach me 

The Eye of God to watch over me 

The Word of God to give me speech 

The Hand of God to protect me 

The Way of God to prevent me 

The Shield of God to shelter me 

The Host of God to defend me 

Against the snares of demons 

Against the temptations of vices 

Against the lusts of nature 

Against every man who meditates injury to me 

Whether far or near 

With few or many. 

6. I have set around me all these powers 

Against every hostile savage power 

Directed against my body and my soul 

Against the incantations of false prophets. 

Against the black laws of heathenism 

Against the false laws of heresy 

Against the deceits of idolatry 

Against the spells of women, and smiths and druids 

Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man. 

7. Christ protect me to-day 

Against burning, against prison 
Against drowning, against wound 
That I may receive abundant reward. 

8. Christ with me, Christ before me 

Christ behind me, Christ within me 
Christ beneath me, Christ above me 



The Celtic Period 57 

Christ at my right, Christ at my left 
Christ in the fort 
Christ in the chariot seat 
Christ in the poop. 

9. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me 
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me 
Christ in every eye who sees me 
Christ in every ear that hears me. 

10. I bind to myself to-day 

This strong power of an invocation of the Trinity 
The faith of Trinity in Unity 
The Creator of the Elements. 

One can see how this poem, beautiful as a prayer, is 
harmful when used as an amulet by an ignorant per- 
son. Still there is nothing " Romish " in it and we 
must never lose sight of the fact that S. Patrick and 
S. Bridget were good " Protestants " protesting against 
the very things now taught by the Church of Rome. 



CHAPTER IV 

CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONS 

Pari I. — Conversion of the Eastern Goth and 'Anglo- 
Saxon 

CELTIC, GALLICAN AND ROMAN MISSIONARIES IN THE 
WEST EASTERN MISSIONARIES IN THE EAST 

contrast The Teutons take their Christianity hard. 

cliticlJnd It is interesting to turn from the volatile en- 
Teutonic . 
adoption of thusiastic Celt, comprehending at a glance as 

ianity ft were ^ b eau ty an( i the truth of Christian- 
ity, to the rather obstinate German eagerly pouring over 
the mountains from Asia into Europe and destroying 
all he finds. Their missionary history naturally di- 
vides itself into the story of the various sources from 
which it sprang. 

First, there is the story of the Teuto-Roman 
sources of adoption of Christianity in the Apostolic era 

Teutonic 

conversion D y those Germans who, for many years in sec- 
tions and in driblets of tribal life, had wan- 
dered into the confines of the Roman world and settled 
there. Especially did they settle in Cappadocia and 
some of these may have been of the number of " every 
nation under heaven " who heard and saw the wonder- 

58 



Conversion of the Teutons 59 

ful events of the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Ger- 
mans of Cappadocia, strangers to their heathen coun- 
trymen, friends henceforth of Christ, may be intended 
in the opening words of S. Peter's Epistle; for all 
over Cappadocia they had their colonies and settle- 
ments in those days just as the Celts had in Galatia. 
Similarly we find them in Gaul and Burgundia. The 
history of the Pre-Nicene struggle of Christianity with 
these Teutons we have already learned. 

Second, the conversion of the Eastern Teutons by 
the Eastern Church. 

Third, the Celtic-Roman conversion of the Anglo- 
Saxon Teutons in England. 

Fourth, the Roman element in the later conversion of 
the Teutons in Europe. 

Fifth, the Anglican element mixed with Celtic in 
the same region. 

We will take them as described. Coming now to the 
Eastern Teutons. 

The pre-Christian history of the Teutons is 
Teutonic singularly interesting in whichever part of 
ism th e great family we study it. Unlike that of 

the Celts, the literature of their heathen cult 
has been wonderfully preserved. The Nibenlungen- 
lied for the European Teutons, the Sagas of Icelandic 
Folk-lore, notably the Burnt Ngal, for the Northmen, 
and the traditions of heathen faith preserved in 
England, all combine to give us a clear and vivid pic- 



60 The Planting of the Chureh 

ture of the whisperings of the truth, which were heard 
by the Teutonic peoples in those dim and distant days 
of their first advent into Europe. Only one or two 
points can here be noticed, but these seem to hold in 
them ideas which hark back to the days of Patriarchal 
times, when knowledge of the one true God 

Traces of 

Patriarchal still lingered, the common property of man- 
gled re- kind. Theirs is the one heathen race to whom 
the opening words of the Lord's Prayer did 
not sound strangely. " Our Father " spoken to Jeho- 
vah was wonderful to the Jews. " Our Father " to the 
Teuton was sweetly familiar. " All fadir " had been 
their name for God for long ages. They believed in the 
immortality of the soul, though not the resurrection of 
the body. They had traditions of Lucifer or Loki as 
they called him, and of his fall from heaven to be the 
tormentor and destroyer of men. They believed also 
in Heaven and Hell with its rewards for the good 
and punishments for the bad. They also had a dim 
conception of a Saviour, Balder the good, killed 
by Loki but who would return and save mankind, 
bringing in a reign of peace and plenty. The worship 
was similar in rite, though not in deity worshipped, to 
the Jewisri ritual. The outer court and the Holy of 
Holies had each its counterpart in Teutonic temples. 
They had their meat and their drink offerings and their 
sacred feasts. They had ceremonies similar to those of 
the Jew of consecrating by sprinkling with the sacrificial 



Conversion of the Teutons 6 1 

blood, people and sacred vessels. But while they had all 
this they had much more. A whole army of Gods many 
and Lords many. Human virtues and vices deified and 
natural objects and forces made divine. They had hu- 
man sacrifices and horrible and to us wicked ceremo- 
nies. So that while the missionary had much to build 
upon he had much to destroy. 

Soon after the Apostolic era, late in the 
story of third century, a family of Cappadocia was 
carried captive to Dacia. One of the mem- 
bers of this family was a lad named Ulphilas. 
The family would seem to have been an influential 
one for when hostages were required by Constan- 
tine for the good behaviour of the Goths in that 
part of the empire, Ulphilas was one of the num- 
ber selected. Taken to Constantinople, he there 
learned the Greek language and also became a convert 
to Christianity. This last is supposition. One may also 
fancy that perhaps the family of Ulphilas coming from 
Cappadocia brought with them to their new home the 
knowledge of Christ. If so, this would be an additional 
reason why Ulphilas should be chosen to be sent as 
hostage to a city where for the first time in the history 
of the world no heathen temple had a place. It was 
the new capitol built by Constantine as a Christian city 
to turn the eyes of the world away from heathen Rome. 
The beautiful Church of the Sancta Sophia was its 
center and pride. Nowhere rose the fires of heathen 



62 The Planting of the Church 

altars, but everywhere the bloodless sacrifice of the 
Christian altar celebrated the reconciliation of God with 
man. Whether a convert before or now, here at least 
his spiritual life was deepened and intensified. Here he 
saw a whole city worshipping the Saviour, here his 
heart was stirred by the resolve to make his people the 
people of his God and Christ. Shortly after this came 
the Arian Council of Antioch to which Ul- 
whyui- philas subscribed. From readme: his confes- 

pliilas was ° 

an Arian s i ns of faith it would seem that his mind was 
not astute enough to perceive the force of 
Greek intricacy of thought and expression. Greek was 
a new language to him. The differences of Homo — 
or Homoi — ousion were difficult to him. His whole 
heart was absorbed in the thought of converting his 
people to Christ. His early surroundings in a heathen 
country accustomed him besides to the idea of ranks 
and degrees in the persons of Divinity. Hence we may 
easily explain his adhesion to the definition most 
strongly presented to him. His subsequent isolation 
from the scene of controversy kept him apart from the 
return of the Church to the Catholic faith fifty years 
later.* Ulphilas' first work on returning home 
invention was that £ i nvent j n g an alphabet for his 

alphabet people. The Goths, unlike the Gauls, had no 
written language. The Druids, whose faith 






* He died on his way to the second Council of Constantinople 
381 where Arianism was finally rejected. 



Conversion of the Teutons 63 

seems to have been more or less intellectual, early 
adopted the Greek character to express their native 
sounds. Not so the Goths. And here develops a char- 
acteristic of missions having for their source an East- 
ern and not a Western impulse. Everywhere that we 
can trace the first missionaries in the country to the 
Greek Church, there we find the Bible given to the peo- 
ple in their own tongue. Where, on the contrary, the 
source is Latin, there Latin is invariably the means of 
communication. The insistence of the Roman comes 
out in his wooden adherence to his own language till 
in time it comes to be an article of his faith.* Ulphilas, 
an Eastern missionary, invents for his people an alpha- 
bet, and to this Gothic character the Germans are to 
this day faithful in spite of its rude unsuitableness 
to the demands of an increasing multiplicity of books. 
Ulphilas gave his people the Bible in their 
The first own language wherein they were born. The 

Gothic 00 J 

Bible « Codex Argentens " t is to-day the oldest 

written monument of the Gothic language. 
The copy we possess was made at the close of the fifth 
century, " seven centuries older than the Scandinavian 
Edda, five older than the German Nibenlungen, three 
older than the English form of Csedmon." A curious 

* Note the curious legend that God never intended anything 
but Greek or Latin or Hebrew to be used else Pilate would have 
written the sentence over the cross in more languages! 

t This was the only Teutonic Bible till Wicliff's time.— Dean 
Merivale. 



64 The Planting of the Church 

circumstance is recorded of Ulphilas in connection with 
this translation. His great desire was to make his peo- 
ple a peaceful settled nation and it is said he omitted 
in his translation the book of the Kings as " affording 
too much encouragement to their warlike propensities." 
But Ulphilas the peacelover was not the only mission- 
ary. The constant conflict of Roman and Barbarian for 
the control of the empire led now and again 
The em- to the defeat of the Barbarian. Defeat had 

pire as a 

Sflu i e < Sce ry always meant not only acceptance of the em- 
pire politically, but the empire religiously, as 
well. This now meant the acceptance of Christianity. 
Martyrs among the heathen there were many, but the 
faith once accepted was clung to with equal tenacity; 
and when the time came for the Barbarian to conquer 
the Empire, hundreds were the martyrs who refused 
to worship the old ancestral deities and were slain by 
their own brethren. The custom seems to have been 
to march a figure of the Deity through the ranks and 
all who made no obeisance were hacked to death. The 
long tribulation however came at last to an end. The 
Huns appeared on the Gothic frontier and the Teutons 
in danger of their lives sought admission to Mercia 
where Ulphilas had settled peacefully and securely on 
" this side " of the Danube with his Christian Germans. 
The Emperor Valens consented to this immigration 
provided the newcomers embraced Christianity. To 



Conversion of the Teutons 65 

this they agreed and at once a wild horde rushed across 
the river. In vain the Romans tried to keep count of 
the vast multitude. All direction of its movements 
was abandoned and the crowd was allowed in sheer 
helplessness to settle themselves. But they had no 
food. No crops were ready and in frantic despair 
the men pushed over the stated boundaries of Ger- 
many into Roman territory. Valens came in haste to 
quiet them. A great battle was fought in which thou- 
sands of the Romans were killed, and had the " Ger- 
mans possessed any real leader the history of the East 
had been then and there materially altered." But Va- 
lens was killed, Theodosius came to the front, the Ger- 
mans were ably pacified and placed as guardians of the 
Eastern Empire and Church along the Danube, and the 
land had rest. Theodosius was an orthodox 
Return of Christian and one of his first acts was the 

East to 

orthodoxy calling of the Orthodox council of Constanti- 
nople. Ulphilas was especially invited by the 
Emperor to be present, but a long life of hardship and 
exposure was about to end. Just as the 150 Bishops 
which composed it were assembling this great and holy 
man died. A great work was ended, a great era of 
missionary activity was over. Again in this portion 
succeeds the period of assimilation and settlement and 
again the missionary historian must turn his eyes to 
another part of the field. 



66 The Planting of the Church 

This time the journey is not a long one. It 
SS^foSa^r is only north and a little west to Pannonia — 

to Pan- 

nonia a name which implies the mixed and restless 
population which lived there. The religion 
of Christ seems much disturbed by wars and tumults. 
The frenzied goings and comings, caused by the in- 
roads of the Huns, seem to have much unsettled not 
only the population but the faith of the Goths of this 
part of the empire. The great missionary who changes 
it all was Severinus of Noricum, also an ambassador 
from the Eastern Church. He was a powerful preacher 
and a man of magnetic personality. So much so that on 
one occasion when the Germans were frightfully de- 
feated and obliged to retreat, he went alone into the 
camp of the enemy and demanded successfully that the 
retreat should be unmolested. More than once by his 
personal persuasion he induced the advancing Heathen 
to desist. He was one of the great ramparts of civ- 
ilization against the Barbarian. Mons. Ozanam draws 
a striking picture of the work of this great advance 
General of the Kingdom of Christ : " The Anchorite of 
Noricum watched, at the same time, over the interest 
of Christianity generally. Had the flood of the inva- 
sions rushed forward in a single tide, it would have 
submerged civilization altogether. The Empire lay 
exposed, but the nations could only enter one by one 
and the Christian priesthood flung itself into the breach, 
so as to restrain them until the appointed moment, 



Conversion of the Teutons 67 

until, so to speak, they were called by name. Attila 
found S. Leo at the passage of the Mincio, as he also 
found S. Agnanus under the walls of Orleans and S. 
Lupus at the gates of Troves. S. Germanus of Aux- 
erre checked Esthnarick, King of the Allemanni, in the 
heart of Gaul just as here Severinus restrained their 
warriors on the road to Italy. Posterity is not enough 
aware how much it owes to these noble servants of God 
who had the glory far from common, not of advancing 
their age but of retarding it. In times so disastrous as 
these, ten years was the salvation of the world." One 
more picture of Severinus must be given. He lived as 
the people lived in a cave outside of Noricum, simply 
and hardily. He was not above them, he was of 
them, he won their hearts. They loved him. One 
day a band of recruits for the Roman Army came to 
him for his blessing. Among them was a tall powerful 
young Goth on whose form and fine earnest face Sev- 
erinus looked long. " Go on," he said to him. " You 
are poor and clothed in skins to-day, the time will 
come when you shall enrich many." It was Odoacer. 
Long after, his kindness and mildness to the Christians 
may be traced to his impression of this meeting. It 
was like the first meeting of David and Samuel. Sev- 
erinus was after all but an outpost of Christianity.* 
Long centuries passed and only little by little were the 

* The Lithuanians and the Eastern Goths were also converted 
to Christ by the Eastern Church. 



68 The Planting of the Church 

tenacious Germans torn from their national Gods. 
One, the Golden Dragon, seems to have been a most 
inveterate favourite and for many years the clergy were 
in despair at driving him out. Finally guile accom- 
plished what persuasion and argument could not : The 
clergy made serpents likewise and put them in the 
churches, symbolic, they said, of Moses's brazen ser- 
pent! Then gradually the cult died out. 

THE CONVERSION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON 

The conversion of the Angelic-Teutons, as 
romratf we ma y ca ^ the Anglo-Saxons in playful 
cSSt- memory of the story of Pope Gregory, differs 

i unity 

from that of all the other branches of the race. 
Here we find no force exerted as later in the conver- 
sions by Charlemagne or the Norseman Vikings. The 
King and Queen might be Christian but their people 
were never forced to accept Christ on this account. 
From four sources we can trace the missionary impress 
on their tribes. 

First, that of Rome in the persons of S. 
Augustine and his companions in Kent. Sec- 
ond, that of the Celtic Church in the persons 
of S. Aiden, S. Chad and S. Cuthbert, not 
to mention many others. Third, Gaulish Bishops sent 
from France, not once, but many times. Fourth, the 
great harmonizer of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the 
Greek monk Theodore, consecrated by the Bishop of 






Conversion of the Teutons 69 

Rome in place of the Irish Wighard* who had come to 
him seeking consecration for the Archbishopric of Can- 
terbury, in order to restore to the Saxon mission the 
Roman element which had ended with Birinus. Let 
us sketch the flow from these four sources as they 
sparkle on the waves of the past. 

In the Spring and Eastertide of 597, while the saintly 
Columba was preparing his companions in Iona for a 
life in which he no longer was to be their leader, 
there landed on another island in the southern part of 
England, the Monk Augustine and his com- 
panions. There, five centuries before, Julius 
gun Caesar had landed for his Roman conquest 

of Britain which began the linking of this 
" island of the sea " with the great brain-city of the 
world, the mistress of the nations, Rome. There too 
on the same shores of Kent one hundred and fifty years 
before, had landed the fierce Teutonic sea kings, Hen- 
gist and Horsa, beginning the Saxon conquest of the 
island. All these events blended together formed the 
future " England." There is therefore in Augustine's 
landing on the Kentish coast one of those strange beau- 
ties of appropriateness of time and place which con- 
stantly reveals to the student of history the planning of 
One Master, shaping the destinies of man according to 
a definite and consistent scheme. Here was interwoven 



* Wighard died in Rome before he could return. 



yo The Planting of the Church 

that fourth strand in the < cord of English character 
which has made it what we know it. Roman law and 
order on Celtic* volatility, Saxon steadiness of pur- 
pose and tenaciousness of character, with Christian 
consecration to a high and religious sense of unselfish- 
ness and duty, all this met and mingled on the Kentish 

coast. 

One of the striking features in Teutonic 

Early life was their reverence for and devotion to 

Gallican 

influence their women. As the late Bishop Selwyn 
once beautifully expressed it, the Saxon was 
one of the few heathen nations where the purity of the 
home life was sacred, made by one man married to one 
woman. To guard their honour and that of their chil- 
dren, the women fought in battle by the side of the men. 
They were " helps meet for them " in the part of the 
garden of God's earth given them by God to care for. 
Among the Celts while we find women workers in the 
Church, their great missionaries are their men. S. Pat- 
rick, S. Columba, S. Killian, S. Burgo are samples of 
the names we meet. Among the Teutons however the 
feminine element comes in with frequency and power. 
Over and over again, in England, in Germany, or in 
Norway it is the marriage of a heathen King to a Chris- 
tian Princess which begins the conversion of the nation. 
When Augustine landed in Britain he found already a 
Christian Queen, Bertha, daughter of Charibert of 

* See Freeman's " Norman Conquest." 






Conversion of the Teutons 



7* 



France, married to Ethelbert, King of Kent. She had 
brought with her according to agreement her Gallican 
Bishop Luidhard, and Augustine found them worship- 
ping, in the little Church of St. Martin's, Canterbury, 
the same Saviour he came to preach. The warrior 
Monk of Tours preceded in spirit the scholar Monk 
from Rome. 

Augustine had also another surprise. Be- 
Early fore long he heard of the Celtic Church win- 

Celtic ... 

source ning its enthusiastic way in Wales and Scot- 
land, and to his duties as missionary " sent " 
to the heathen Saxon, he added for himself that ever 
Roman ambition the desire to be " greatest." This 
characteristic of unconverted Peter, who strengthened 
himself and not his brethren, was, in the person of Au- 
gustine, for a long time a hindrance to Church unity. 
The conference to which representatives of 
Antago- the Welsh Church were sent that they might 

nized by J ° 

Augustine me et this newcomer, claiming exclusive juris- 
diction, was characteristic of the times and 
people. The Welsh Prelates were instructed to " try 
the credentials of the Roman by the test of Christ's 
humility." Arriving tardy at the place of meeting, 
they were to notice if Augustine rose to welcome them 
in courteous humility. If he remained seated in 
haughty pride, they were to question the sincerity of his 
conduct. Augustine and his party reached the field 
of meeting first, and he was enthroned to wait in state 



J2 The Planting of the Church 

the untutored barbarians, who had somehow man- 
aged to hear of Christ before he proclaimed Him, and 
to have a Bishopric and Orders independently of Rome ! 
Soon came the Celtic clergy and Augustine, remaining 
seated, received them as vassals. It was enough. The 
Welshmen resented the assumption and on their Celtic 
peculiarities of the Tonsure, and keeping of Easter, they 
insisted as if articles of faith. For nearly three-quar- 
ters of a century the Celtic Church and the Roman 
mission kept apart. It remained for a Northumbrian 
King, Oswy, to cast the decisive vote for the Roman 
customs fifty years later, and another quarter 
fluencein of a century passed, before the Greek Monk 

building 

cwc S h Theodore, consecrated Bishop by Hadrian, 
finally welded the two into a national 

church. United* at that late date, they still anticipated 

by nearly one hundred and fifty years the secular union 
of the kingdoms under the King of Wessex. 

vmiinpre- Roman missions were attempted in Northum- 

cedes civil 

England ^ria by Pauiinus, one of Augustine's compan- 
ions, but after a temporary success they failed 
and were succeeded by the Celtic missionaries. Birinus 
last of the Roman missionaries similarly tried and failed 
in Wessex. Mellitus had done the same in Essex; Jus- 
tus in the see of Rochester; while of Rufianus, the 



* It would be a strange coincidence if church dismemberment 
should precede the civil break up of English rule. 



Conversion of the Teutons 73 

fourth missionary sent by Pope Gregory, we know little. 

These five men represent the essence and the success of 

the Roman missionary force. It failed and all 

succSmo/ 1 but perished. We now come to the Celtic. 

the Roman ,. ■»«••• 

En 88 i i0 nd ln ^ n collapse of the Roman Mission ap- 
peal was made to the Celtic Church. The 
characteristic of Celtic work had ever been the founda- 
tion of schools for training and educating 
second the young. Caught by S. Patrick from the 
effort spirit of the Church in Gaul, he brought these 

institutions to Ireland. From there the idea 
was taken by S. Columba into Scotland, and many are 
the instances we have of the effect of these schools on 
the future of the Church. Noble youths were sent there 
for their education, and later when they came 
the school to power in their own right they turned for 

in Celtic r . 

zItion eU ~ ne ^P to tne instructors of their youth. Such is 
the story of Northumbria. Oswald, brought 
up in the Columbian Monasteries, turned to them to 
Christianize his people when his time came to reign. 
Bishop Corman was sent in response to his appeal. 
He seems to have wanted one indispensable requisite of 
the missionary, tact, and he went back to Hy to report 
" failure." After recounting his trials to his brethren 
one of them said to him, " Methinks, Brother, thou hast 
been harsher than was fitting to untaught babes. Hast 
thou not forgotten the maxim of the Apostle about 



74 The Planting of the Church 

' milk for babes/ that by degrees they may be nourished 

with the Divine Word, and enabled to receive the more 

perfect and keep the higher precepts of God? " It was 

Aiden who spoke. The others decided at 

The com- once that here was the man fitted to win the 

ing of 

Aiden men f Northumbria. He was consecrated 
Bishop in A. D. 635 and went at once to. 
his charge. He settled at Lindesfarne and began that 
second great center of religious teaching which made 
England famous. Columba, Aiden, Cuthbert, Bede, 
Alcuin, Selwyn, and Patteson are like-minded on the 
importance of Christian education in the mission field. 
Four Celtic missionaries, Adda, Betti, Cedd, 
progress Northumbrians, with Diuma, an Irishman, 

of Celtic 

missions ma y nex ^ fo e $%{£ { h ave {%[& the A. B. 

C. and D. of Celtic missions in Mercia, 
(653 A. D.) Cedd went further and revived the Ro- 
man missions in Essex. It is difficult in so short a space 
to do more than mention the names of the Celtic en- 
thusiasts who conquered England for Christ. Peada 
in Middle Anglia; Ceollach, Finan, and Trumhere at 
Litchfield; Ithama in Paulinus's old see of Rochester; 
Thomas and Colman, all have their work and their 
success. And then greatest of all, we meet SS. Chad 
and Cuthbert. Self-denying, traveling on foot from 
village to village, unwearying in private devotion, in 
prayers and journeyings, their story reads like a chapter 
on S. Paul in the book of Acts. 



Conversion of the Teutons 75 

But we must turn to the Gallican element. 
can church We have alreadv spoken of Luidhardin the 



E?gSX f train of Queen Bertha. It should also be 



the conse- 
crator oi 
English 

noticed that Augustine himself had gone 
to Aries for orders, not to Rome. There came also 
to East Anglia a Bishop named Felix, (it is in- 
teresting to notice how nearly all the mis- 
Ga C iiictn sionaries to the English are Bishops!) who 
Felix after the Gallican fashion, established a 

school at Dunwich in Suffolk, Here he was 
joined and his work continued by Forsey and four oth- 
ers from Ireland. The work of the Gallican Church 
was not only in sending missionaries but in estab- 
lishing the Roman usage in regard to Easter. It was 
the training of Wilfrid of Northumbria for three years 
at Lyons, which convinced him of the importance 
of universal conformity to the general rule. On his 
return Oswy the King called a conference to meet 
at Whitby, where Abbess Hilda had charge of the 
famous house of Canida Casa. Bishops of the Celtic 
Church pleaded for their time of celebrating Easter 
as coming from S. John. Wilfrid pleaded conformity 
to the general rule, and Oswy cast the vote for Wil- 
frid. The Celts retired discomfited but, twenty-five 
years later, Theodore, the Greek Monk of Tarsus, 
sent as Missionary Bishop to Canterbury 
The com- by Hadrian, healed the breach. Hence- 

ingof / 

Theodore forth (A. D. 68 1 ) through the prepara- 
tion of the Gallicans, the Celtic Church and 



j6 The Planting of the Church 

Roman mission were welded into the Church of 
England. Wilfrid may be said with Theodore to 
have completed the Saxon conversion, for his work 
among the South Folk was as successful as Arch- 
bishop Theodore's house to house pilgrimage in the 
North. When they died Saxon heathendom was 
practically dead.* Archbishop Theodore is one of 
the pictures of the day. Sixty-six years old when 
consecrated by Hadrian, he began his life when most 
men nowadays end it. He walked all over England 
learning to know his people personally and, with no 
" impedimenta," spent his strength for his Master. 

There only remains to notice the femi- 
Feminme nine element in Teutonic missionary life. 

element in •' 

conversion Bertha in Kent, Ethelreda and Ermhilda in 
Northumbria, Eoba and Alchfled in Mercia, 
Wertbuga at Chester, and Hilda at Whitby, strike the 
keynote of woman's place and work. The first three 
were Christian Princesses married into a heathen 
Court, the last was a Christian Abbess over a mixed 
settlement of men and women. The Convents of those 
days were not Convents in our sense of the word at all. 
They were " settlements," model homes and places of 
learning, refinement, and industry, from which the ordi- 
nary home took its inspiration and example. Convents 
as we know them, there were none. 



* The last heathen were baptized in 688 by Archb. Theodore. 



Conversion of the Teutons yy 

The province of the missionary historian does not 
take us further. To the Church historian belongs the 
task or rather delight of watching the development of 
that great educational system which begun by S. Co- 
lumba at Tona, S. Aiden at Lindisfarne, and S. Cuth- 
bert at Durham, grew into the great schools of 
Malmsbury, Yarrow, and York, and so into the great 
school and university life of present day England. 
The missionaries planted the seeds and the Church has 
watered them until they have produced the blossoming 
fruit of English life and character. 



78 



The Planting of the Church 




CHAPTER IV 

CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONS 

Part II. — Conversion of the Teutons in Europe 

A. MISSIONARIES FROM ROME AND GAUL 

We now come to the conversion of the 
SfcK&S Teutons of the North and middle East of 
TeutJn! Europe. This is effected by the hammering 

of many generations of missionaries of all 
sorts and conditions, fierce and gentle, learned and 
ignorant, nobleman and peasant, on the rude but 
rugged doorways of their hearts. Soldier and Monk, 
Emperor and Bishop, women and men, are represented 
in this host. Whether in England or in Bavaria, Mer- 
cia, or the shores of the Baltic, the struggle of Chris- 
tianity with the Teuton is a fierce one. The Saxons 
and the Teutons are not fickle by nature, not easily 
won to a new faith. The Roman missions creeping up 
from the South of England, the Celtic missionaries 
reaching down from the North, worked long and pa- 
tiently before the Anglo-Saxon Church was fairly 
founded in England. So too on the continent. The 
struggle of Christianity with the pure blooded Teuton 

79 



80 The Planting of the Church 

was long and fierce. Quite a different story from that 
of the reception of Christianity in the Apostolic ages in 
Gaul. 

With this part of the story new means, char- 
©f ilu'tonic ac teristic especially of Teutonic conversion, 
IItion eU " come before us. In* the Teuto-Celtic con- 
versions of the Apostolic age under the Ro- 
man Empire we had the natural handing on of the Faith 
from one person to another. With the East Goths we 
had the Apostolic Ulphilas and Severinus, ambassadors 
from the Greek Church. With the West Goths, the 
Franks, comes in a new and frequently recurring me- 
dium of conversion; a heathen king marries a 
of hS,then Christian princess and the Court becomes the 

kin^s and 

pSSceisea scene °f change from heathen deity to Christ. 
It is the story of the little captive maid over 
again. The conversion for instance of the Marcomanni 
through their Queen Fritigil, converted by S. Ambrose 
of Milan, f As one reads the pages of Gregory of 
Tours and Hincmar of Rheims, the historians of the 
period, one is struck by the change and the distance 



* In this connection should be recorded the part that the Chris- 
tian soldiers played marching in the Legions of Rome. 

fS. Ambrose indeed plays quite a part in the history of this 
period. Bishop of Milan, with again one of those wonderful in- 
stances of impressive personality, his is one of the great influences 
which led men of the West to rely on Latin Christianity. The 
warrior Bishop of Milan in an age of warriors is a most pic- 
turesque as well as impressive person. 



Conversion of the Teutons 8 1 

which separates their stories of the spread of Chris- 
tianity from those of Apostolic days. Conversion is 
no longer from force of conviction but largely force of 
circumstance. Royal persuasions cause policy to be 

mingled with the motives of the convert. 
o??oyaity Often it is a weary tale of wholesale, super- 
conversion stitious embracing of Christianity in the face 

of a barbarous enemy for the sake of victory; 
or forcible conversions at the command of the mon- 
arch, followed by woebegone relapses to heathen dark- 
ness or heretical error. The imitators of Constantine 
and his " Hoc signo vinces " are many : while the re- 
lapses into heathenism from an ill-understood Chris- 
tianity, correspond to the fall of the Roman Christian 
into Arianism. 

Again and again has the missionary to 
Jpeed'the learn that only " Festina lente " is the way 
™?t££ ns of God. The slow growth of the mus- 

period 

tard seed is the pledge that it will be the 
great tree and not the gourd of the prophet giving 
shelter only for the night. The warning of the pe- 
riod is against haste and other than motives of per- 
sonal conviction on the part of the convert. 

The conversion of Arbrogastes by the idea that 
Ambrose could control the movements of the sun 
and moon; the conversions of the Burgundians, the 
Marcomanni, and the Franks, on the eve of their re- 



82 The Planting of the Church 

spective struggles with the Huns and Vandals, all are 

instances in point. The conversion of the Franks 

may serve as an example. The Franks in 

ciovis and that day inhabited Belgium and of their 

the conver- - 1 ° 

rSmto tho r °yal line came in the course of time one 
Ciovis to the throne. He married for wife 
the Christian Clotilde, Princess of the Burgundians, 
a tribe already converted to Christianity and inhabit- 
ing the country of the river Soane. When their son 
was born Ciovis consented to the entreaties of Clotilde 
and the boy was baptized. Soon after came a terrible 
inroad of the Huns and Ciovis was called to battle with 
Attila at Chalons-sur-Marne. Sleepless the night be- 
fore the battle, in the face of fearful odds, Ciovis vowed 
that if the God his wife worshipped w ul 
he would be baptized. The vict i y 
day fixed the wavering purpose of the K ng 
Christmas day 496, in Rheims by the great B 
Remigius, Ciovis was baptized. It was the orelude 
to the coronation of Charlemagne bv the B'shoo of 
Rome 300 years later. Three thousand warriors were 
christened with their leader. " As they rose from the 
waters one might have seen fourteen centures of em- 
pire rising with them ; the whole array of chivalry, 
the long series of the crusades, the deep philosophy of 
the schools, in one word all the heroism, all the learn- 
ing, all the liberty of the later ages "* So writes Oza- 
* Quoted in Dean Merivale' 



Conversion of the Teutons 8 3 

nam. The irrepressible warlikeness of the 
one of the German people, noticed in the story of Ul- 

causes of 

crusades philas and his omission to translate the book 
of Kings, may largely account for the war- 
rior movements of Christianity in the middle ages, 
namely, the warrior missionaries, and the diversion by 
the Pope of this fighting energy to the Crusades. The 
Germans chafed long under the priestly rule thus estab- 
lished, but the savage liberty of the Teutons spoke at 
last in the Reformation. The lawlessness of the Refor- 
mation on the continent is but the fit sequel to the rest- 
less swaying back and forth from Churchmanship 
to infidelity all through this early story of the Ger- 
man Church. 

Clovis having won the battle with the help of Christ, 
proceeded to fight others with a religious motive. 
Their story is a wicked and a bloody one, all the sadder 
because done in the name of Christ and under the cloak 
of converting the nations. 

The great missionary names of the epoch 
The are, Nicentius of Treves, head of a school 

pioneer ' 

S£e 8 s ion " of missionaries; Lupus of Sens, driven out 
by his clergy, preaching to the Goths of the 
Sheldt and Meuse; S. Aloysius (Eligias or Elois) of 
Tours (you may still see his name perpetuated there in 
names of streets and taverns " Du bon S. Elois") 
who, longing for a life of greater hardship than he 



84 The Planting of the Church 

found at home, went to Gueldres and to Friesland. His 
work is more Apostolic than most of the rest and it 
is a pleasure to read its story. 

The following is an extract from one of his sermons 
quoted in Dean Meri vale's story of the conversion of 
the Continental Teutons : 

" Worship not the heavens nor the stars 
nor the earth nor anything else but God ; for 
s. Aioysius j^ e ^y jj- g p 0wer a lone has created and dis- 
posed all things. Doubtless the sky is lofty, 
the stars beautiful, the earth is vast, and the ocean 
boundless but He who made all these is greater and 
fairer than they. I declare then that ye must not fol- 
low the impious customs of the unbelieving pagans. 
Let no man take note of what day he leaves his house 
or what day he returns there for God has made every 
day. Nor must anyone scruple to begin work at the 
new moon; for God has made the moon to the end 
that it should mark the time and enlighten the dark- 
ness and not that it should interrupt men's business 
and disturb their minds. Let none believe himself sub- 
ject to an appointed destiny, to a lot, or to a horo- 
scope, according to the common saying, ' Every man 
shall be that which his birth has made him; ' for God 
wills that all men should attain salvation and arrive 
at the knowledge of the truth. But on every Sunday 
present yourselves at the Church and when there take 
no thought of business, or of quarrels, or of trifling 






Conversion of the Teutons 85 

conversation, and hearken in silence to the divine 
teaching. It sufficeth not my friends to have received 
the name of Christian if you do not the works of Chris- 
tians. That man bears the name of Christian with 
profit to himself who keeps the precepts of Christ, 
who steals not, who bears not false witness, who lies 
not, who doth not commit adultery, who hateth no 
man, who returns not evil for evil. Thai man is a 
Christian indeed who puts no trust in phylacteries or 
other devilish superstitions but hopes in Christ only; 
who receives the wayfarer with gladness as though 
he were entertaining Christ himself, for it is said, * I 
was a stranger and ye took me in.' That man I tell 
you is a Christian who washes the feet of his guests 
and treats them as dear kinsmen, who bestows alms on 
the poor according to his own means, who touches 
not the produce of his own farm till he has given a 
portion to the Lord, who knows not the deceitful scale 
or the false measure, who lives chastely and in the 
fear of God, who finally bearing in mind the Creed 
and the Lord's prayer takes care to teach them to his 
children and to his household." 

Human nature is the same in all time. This sermon 
fourteen hundred years old reads as if written for a 
congregation of to-day. 

Another great missionary of Western Gaul 

s.Aman- was S. Amandus of Aquitania. He may 

be said to be one of the first missionaries 

to the Teutons coming directly from the 



86 The Planting of the Church 

Papal City. His call to be a missionary came on this 
wise. He was at S. Peter's in Rome when he saw 
in a vision a man from Gaul calling him to come to 
them. He went and attempted to convert the heathen 
about Tournay. Failing to persuade the people, he 
tried to force them through the royal commands of 
Dagobert and for a long time the story of the Gospel 
of peace is anything but peaceful. The people resented 
force by force and bitter struggles were the result. 
Still little by little the cross won and finally Amandus 
was revered by all the community. The warlike char- 
acter of the conversions, however, affected greatly the 
character of the convert. The conquered warrior be- 
came the warrior Bishop. A use of the Papacy may be 
seen in this relation. Although intent upon 
Restrain- temporal power himself, the Pope was quite 

ing power L x x 

Papacy determined to allow no rival in the combina- 
tion of spiritual and temporal forces, and the 
constant check exercised by the Pope on the great Pre- 
lates of Europe, prevented a ruling episcopacy all over 
the continent.* 

B. MISSIONARIES FROM ENGLAND 

So far it is all the older civilizations which have 
worked upon the Teuton. Eastern and Roman have 
been the sources of Christian life and thought. We 



* See Dean Merivale. 



Conversion of the Teutons 87 

now come to a new element. A new civilization un- 
tinged with colours from old life comes with fresh 
vigour to the charge in the persons of Celtic and Saxon 
missionaries, SS. Columbanus, Gall, and Boniface. 
The new wine in the new bottles. Oddly enough this 
new element is educational rather than evangelistic. Or 
rather the method of conversion is in the establish- 
ment of schools and settlements in addition to the time 
honored system of preaching. 

The " foolishness of preaching " saved some, 
"F"\„ but the schools of Fulda, of S. Gall, and 

school " ' ' 

Gern?any° the two Corbeys, saved more, and the new 
civilization began. The school for all who 
wish to learn; the model settlement, the ideal basis 
of which was labour, mingled with contemplation, takes 
the place of the civilization of Greece or Rome in 
which labour was servitude and education practically 
for the few. The peaceful Monk takes the place of 
the conquering soldier as pioneer in the transformation 
of life and manners which followed the missionary 
from England. 

We saw that about the time S. Augustme landed 
in England to convert the Saxons a Celtic 
nr'ssionarv crossed over to the continent 

8 C«»l!:m- 

b«nus from Ireland tr convert the Teutons. This 

was S. G-lunb; 1 Together with S. Gall 

he travel lie and South Germany, 

S - Gan - ' use of S. 

Ga. Teat center of learn- 



88 The Planting of the Church 

ing for the times.* It was also a great 

missionary center, and from it men went all 

customs over that part of Europe. Everywhere the 

planted 

Celtic missionary went, he established the 
custom of a married clergy, the Celtic fash- 
ion of keeping Easter, and independence of the Pope of 
Rome. Woman's part was not wanting in the propa- 
gation of this new and gentler civilization. The Irish 
missionaries went as far as Thuringia and 
conversion foto the country on the Danube. But they 
in g ia ur " had been preceded by a Christian Princess 
Radegunde, who had married the pagan king 
of the country. Only slow progress was made how- 
ever. An Irish Bishop, a priest, and a deacon named 
respectively Killian, Colman, and Totman, 
were a little later martyred there for the 

Celtic J 

influence forth, because they stood out strongly for 
purity of life and morals at the Court where 

manners were most undesirable. Over and over again 

was sown the red seed of martyr's blood. That was 

in Thuringia. 

Turn now to the Church in Bavaria. Re- 
peated onslaughts by the forces of Christen- 
dom were made here. From the Court of 
Clotaire II., whose civil history we little 

connect with good deeds, came the two missionaries 

* This monastery still exists and makes the famous Swiss em- 
broideries. Travelers should remember that it was founded by 
Anglican churchmen, not Roman. 



Conversion of the Teutons 89 

Eustatius and Agilius and worked well and 
Galilean nobly. This was early in the 7th century. 
Fifty years later came Bishop Emmeran of 
Poitiers and at the close of it Rupert, Bishop 
of Worms, with the gracious nun Ehrentrude. From 
France Rupert had brought her with him to Salzburg 
to found what we in these days would call a 
Bupertand " settlement,'' in those days a " monastery " 
trud?" of men and women. . Ehrentrude was the Ab- 
bess over the women. All their endeavor was 
to live the Christ life in daily work, study and prayer, 
and so to win the people to both Christianity and civil- 
ization. Both Ehrentrude and Bishop Rupert died 
about the same time. Rupert first and Ehrentrude 
soon after from prostration at his loss. When he 
broke the truth to her that he could not live longer, 
her words were most pathetic : " My Lord and Father, 
you caused me to leave my home and country and now 
you leave me alone. Pray for me that I may soon fol- 
low you." The prayer was answered and side by side 
they sleep till the Master they served so singleheartedly 
comes to waken them. 

Again fifty years go by and again three men from 
Ireland come to Bavaria. The monk Vigilius, Bishop 
Dobla, and a hermit named Alto. They settle in the 
place of Rupert's labors Salzburg, also penetrating 
among the Carinthians. The monk is especially inter- 
esting. He seems to have been a very learned as well 



90 The Planting of the Church 

as devout man and propounded the then preposterous 
theory that the world was round ! Think of that ! A 
missionary, and the middle of the eighth century, fore- 
stalling Columbus ! 

But the most successful of all these workers 
among the Bavarians was a combined product 

S. Boniface ° L 

of the Celtic Church and the Roman Mission 
in England; Boniface or Wilfrid of Devon- 
shire. Early in the eighth century he felt a strong 
call to preach the Gospel to the heathen on the conti- 
nent. He was attracted especially by the Frisians 
among whom he was aided in his work by another 
English missionary, Willibrod, a Bishop. But they 
failed and Boniface for a time returned to England. 
Then he set forth again and bearing letters from the then 
Bishop of Winchester went to the Pope for special 
sanction and blessing. He traveled through Bavaria, 
Thuringia and Eastern France, settling finally for 
steadfast work in Thuringia and Saxony. Here he 
became Bishop, going to Rome for consecration. 

Yet it is to England he seems to turn for real aid and 

instruction. Letters to him from Daniel, his 

from Dan- old Bishop of Winchester, are still extant 

iel, then . 

wSesL anc * most interesting. " You must not, said 
Daniel, " raise your voice against the gen- 
ealogies of their false divinities. Rather let them 
declare to you how their gods were born one from 
another by carnal copulation; then you can readily 



Conversion of the Teutons 91 

show that gods and goddesses of this human origin can 
be no other than human beings, and that as they have 
once begun to exist they cannot continue to exist for- 
ever. Thence proceed to ask them whether the world 
has had a commencement or whether it is eternal, and 
if it has had a commencement who has created it? 
Again ask them where did these deities, who have been 
born, reside before the creation of the world? If they 
say that the world was eternal who was it governed it 
before the birth of the gods? How did they bring 
the world into subjection to their laws seeing that the 
world had no need of them? Whence came the first 
born among themselves and by whom was he gener- 
ated from whom all the rest are descended ? And fur- 
ther ask them whether they think the gods ought to 
be honoured for the sake of temporal and present hap- 
piness or of the future and eternal? If they say for 
temporal happiness, then let them show in what way 
are pagans better off than Christians. You shall 
address them with these and such like objections, not 
by way of provocation and insult but with the great- 
est moderation and mildness. And from time to time 
you shall compare their superstitions with the Chris- 
tian dogmas touching them lightly indeed so that the 
pagans may remain confounded rather than exasper- 
ated. That they may blush at the absurdity of their 
prejudices and not suppose we are ignorant of their 
false opinions and sinful practices. Further you shall 



9 2 The Planting of the Church 

present to them the greatness of the Christian world 
compared with which they are themselves so insignifi- 
cant. And to prevent their boasting the immemorial 
sovereignty of their idols take heed to teach them that 
idols were indeed adored through the whole world 
until the time when the world was reconciled to God 
by the grace of Jesus Christ." 

It was also to England he turned for helpers and 
friends. Men and women came out at his call and we 

can picture the pretty home life such women 
compan- as the beautiful Lioba* and Thecla, the 
Boniface learned Chunigild and Chunigat, would 

make in the heart of those German forests in 
those days of long ago. Here they founded the Ab- 
bey of Fulda which was the " S. Gall " of the dis- 
trict and here the monks Willibald, Wunnibald, Witta, 
and Wigbert from England, and the Bavarian Sturm 
made their center of missionary work. Let us see 
some of the teaching of this famous Boniface given to 
the converts preparing for Baptism. 

" Hearken my brethren and consider with 
Boniface's attention what it is you have renounced. You 
sermon have renounced the devil his works and van- 
ities. What are the works of the devil? 
Pride, idolatry, envy, murder, calumny, falsehood, per- 
jury, hatred, fornication, adultery and everything that 
defiles a man: such as stealing, bearing false witness, 

* Lioba was his cousin and most gifted and accomplished as well 
as beautiful. 



Conversion of the Teutons 93 

gluttony, drunkenness, strife and evil speaking. De- 
votion to sorceries and incantations, belief in witches 
and wer-wolves, wearing of amulets, rebellion against 
God. These and such as these are works of the devil. 
These you have renounced at your baptism and 
as says the Apostle they who do such things cannot 
enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But believing as we 
do that you by God's mercy have abandoned all these 
iniquities, both in thought and deed, it remains to re- 
mind you my well beloved brethren of what you have 
promised in your baptism to do in their stead. For 
first of all you have promised to believe in God Al- 
mighty, in His Son Jesus Christ and in the Holy 
Ghost, one only God in perfect Trinity. See what are 
the commandments you must keep. You must love 
God whom you have confessed with all your heart, 
with all your soul, with all your strength, and next 
your neighbor as yourself. Be patient, merciful, good 
and chaste. Teach your children the fear of God and 
teach your servants also. Make peace where there are 
quarrels, let him who is a judge refuse to accept gifts, 
for gifts blind the judgment even of the wise. Re- 
member to observe the Lord's Day and betake your- 
selves to the Church to pray there, not to amuse your- 
selves with empty babbling. Give alms according to 
your ability, practice hospitality, visit the sick, min- 
ister to the necessities of widows and of orphans, pay 
your tithes to the Church, do naught to any that you 
would not have done to you. Fear none but God, but 
fear Him always. Believe in the coming of Christ, in 
the resurrection of the flesh and in the universal judg- 
ment." 

What an epitome of the catechism and the creed! 
Twelve hundred years ago this was preached and hu- 



94 The Planting of the Church 

man nature is the same to-day, not " evolved ! " Bon- 
iface as time went on established himself at 
jurisdic- Mainz having under him the Bishop of Co- 

tion of a L 

Bomface logne, Tongues, Spires, Worms, and 
Utrecht. More than once he went to Rome 
for advice and encouragement, and soon to his other 
work he added the Bishoprics of Salzburg, Freisin- 
gen, Ratisbon, and Passau. In fact his jurisdiction re- 
minds one of the sees of some of our Bishops of 
North America, one of whom is called the " Bishop 
of all outdoors ! " By the middle of the eighth cen- 
tury we also find this marvelous man acknowledged 
as over lord of Wiirtzberg, Bamberg, and Eiclestadt. 
The difficulties he had to face were phenomenal. In 
addition to the heathen there were the disturbances 
caused by the inroads of the Saracens; the 
immoralities of the courts; and the vagaries 

Hardships 

of the heretics. All these had to be combated, 
and besides he must force on the people the 
austerities then esteemed a necessary part of Chris- 
tian life. The description he gives of his favorite Ab- 
bey of Fulda shows by contrast a glimpse of some of 
the trials and agitations which beset his life. 

" There is a wild spot in the depths of a vast soli- 
tude, in the midst of the people over whom my apos- 
tleship extends, where I have raised a monastery for 
brethren under the rule of S. Benedict, men bound 
to severe abstinence forbidden the use of wine or do- 
mestic service who shall be content with the work of 






Conversion of the Teutons 95 

their own hands. I have acquired this possession from 
diverse pious persons and especially from Carloman, 
Prince of the Franks, and I have dedicated it in the 
name of the Saviour. There it is that, with the good 
will of your Holiness, I have determined to give re- 
pose for a few days to my body, broken as it is by old 
age, and to choose a place of Sepulture: for the spot 
is in the neighborhood of the four nations to which by 
the grace of God I have proclaimed the word of 
Christ." 

But this dream was not to be. With a 
His last sort of aftermath of power he went forth 

mission ... 

again as missionary to the heathen, this time 
to his death in Northern Germany. By one 
of those wonderful coincidences of place so often seen, 
it was among the Frisians where he first found his 
work, that he ends it. As if anticipating his martyr- 
dom he left his various charges in the hands of other 
people. He placed Bishops in every see and taking 
with him Eoban, a Bishop, Walltru and Wintrig, 
Bristo, Guedwaccar, Illesher, and Bathowold, monks, 
he passed down the Rhine and so out onto the North- 
ern coast of Friesland. He took with him also his 
shroud. Here almost on their arrival they all were 
slain, and with their death ended the peaceful conver- 
sion of the Teutons.* 

The vision of their martyrdom is a fit ending for 
such a life as that of Boniface. Surrounded by a num- 



* For the beautiful incident of S. Boniface and the Oak, see 
The first Christmas Tree " by Dr. Vandyke. 



96 The Planting of the Church 

ber of candidates for Baptism, they were being pre- 
pared for that Holy Sacrament when the hostile na- 
tives entered. Seeing that death was determined, Bon- 
iface encouraged them to bear it. Turning his teach- 
ing for " Baptism into Christ's Death " into literal 
application, their foes fell on them and all were killed. 
Straight from this their Baptism of Blood they went to 
be " with him " in the paradise of God. In all the roll 
of martyrdoms not one is more full of beauty or of 
inspiration. Life taken up in absolute consecration is 
laid down in perfect trust. The prayers of Boniface 
left his lips to precede by only a few minutes his own 
entrance before his Saviour! 

Charlemagne was the successor of Boni- 
charie- face in the mission field as converter of the 

magne as 

missionary Germans. He was not a man to brook the 
halting and bickering on the threshold of 
Christianity so patiently met and treated by Boniface. 
He offered his people conversion or conflict and whole- 
sale were the Baptisms and " conversions " (so-called). 
The story is not a pleasant one. At Verdun 4,500 
captive Saxons are said to have been massacred in 
cold blood rather than submit to Baptism. By the 
year 804 Charlemagne's conquest, civil and religious, 
was complete, and he turned himself to the task of edu- 
cating and digesting, as it were, the huge mass of this 
"raw material" that had been swallowed whole by 
Church and State. Alcuin of York was the man se- 



Conversion of the Teutons 



97 



lected to do this, and Corbey near Amiens and New 
Corbey on the Weser, the spots where the great schools 
were placed. Dean Merivale points out that each 
step in Teutonic conversion is marked by a great 
school. 

S. Gall in the South is the monument to the Irish 
missions under the Merovingians; Fulda midway in 
the empire marks the work of the Anglo-Saxons under 
Boniface; so now the two Corbeys perpetuate the 
memory of Charlemagne and Alcuin. 

Once more a period of conversion is over 
continuity and a period of assimilation succeeds. There 

of German , 

history 1S on e more struggle with heathenism in the 
land now ruled by Germans. Its story how- 
ever belongs to the conversion of the Slavs, whose 
subjugation and conversion went hand in hand with 
the spread of Germanic power and influence. Prussia 
was the last stronghold of semi-Germanic heathenism, 
and Prussia has become in these last years the leader 
and the center of " United Germany." The work of 
Bp. Otto of Bamberg and the Order of Teutonic 
Knights, in settling and civilizing the mixed and fierce 
people who lived there, is only really ended with the 
Proclamation of the Empire of Versailles, when these 
same people trained and fitted by the centuries became 
the head of a mighty empire. So interwoven are the 
threads of history. Ulphilas and Severinus, Lupus and 
Nicentious, Columbanus and S. Gall, Bonifacius and 



98 The Planting of the Church 

[Winfrid, Charlemagne and Alcuin, Bishop Otto and 
the Teutonic Knights, together with the fair Lioba and 
gentle Ehrentrude, all have left their stamp on Ger- 
man genius and character. More and more as we 
study, we shall find that the type of Christianity planted 
in the hearts of the people determines the type of their 
civilization. All the various sources of Germanic 
Christianization were gathered into the great move- 
ment of the Reformation, and this in turn spread its 
net work of sympathetic chords over the land to ring 
out clear and full and strong in the national rising for 
a " United Fatherland." 

There remains but one other picture of Teutonic 
conversion. That of the Northmen. 



Conversion of the Teutons 



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ioo The Planting of the Church 



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CHAPTER IV 

CONVERSION OF THE NORTHMEN 

Part III. — The Northmen 

The third great group of the Teutons comprises the 
present nations of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. 
The first two in the story of their conversion belong 
together, while the third, Norway, is a story by itself. 

A. SWEDEN AND DENMARK 

In the early days, the days of Charlemagne, 
Advent of Denmark was known by the name of Tut- 

the North- J J 

Eur^JJe land, so called from its position on the sea- 
shore. In those days the men of Jutland as 
well as those of Sweden and Norway were rovers, 
separate tribes, wandering about the country, fighting 
with one another and bringing terror to the peaceful 
shores of Europe. Charlemagne saw their ships from 
his palace windows in his old age and wept to think 
of the days soon to come when, the force of his pres- 
ence removed, these Sea Kings would ravage his 
country, and destroy the newly established arts and 
ways of peace. 

IOI 



102 The Planting of the Church 

When you cannot conquer a foe, the best 
How met way is to make him a friend. Charlemagne 

by Charle- . ° 

magne conceived the idea of converting the North- 
men. His son, Louis le Debonnaire, carried 
it out and of the restless wandering Viking was, in 
time, made the industrious, domestic Dane and Swede. 
n A characteristic of the conversion of these 

Parts taken 

Kingsin races is the part taken by their Kings. In 
t£S vertins nearly every case the ruler is first converted 

and from the force of his example and precept 
as well as right royal persuasion, his people in turn are 
convinced and baptized. We have had conversions 
of the people through the King by the peaceful force 
of conviction as among the Celts. We have had the 
conversion of the people by strong persuasion from 
outside forces, as in England. We have also had their 
conversion by royal compulsion as in Saxony. We 
now have it effected among the Northmen by a blend- 
ing of all these methods, to which we must add a new 
element the enlightening influences upon these roving 
vikings of travel and sojourning in Christian courts. 
The sight and experience of what Christianity meant 
to the nations they visited was over and over again the 
cause of the King's conversion. 

In the days of Charlemagne missions were only 
planned, but during the reign of his son a great event 

occurred. The king of Jutland, Harold Klak, 
conversion came to Mainz seeking baptism with his fair 
mark " queen Judith. It happened in this way. He 

had sought the help of Louis in some of his 



Conversion of the Northmen 103 

local wars and Ebbo, the great Primate of France, went 
with the army to try and make an opportunity for the 
extension of Christ's Kingdom. He was gone three 
years and while he accomplished little among the people 
he won the King and Queen. On his return they came 
with him and Louis and his Queen stood sponsors for 
Harold and Judith in the " Dom zu Mainz." Picture 
to yourself the scene : the great Cathedral in its new- 
ness, the pomp and ceremony of a court wishing to 
impress the stranger King and Queen, the men at 
arms, the chanting priests and choir ! It is as though 
in these days (were he a Christian) the Emperor of 
Japan should stand sponsor for the King of Korea. 
The Frankish kingdom then, as Japan now, was only 
newly started in its career as leader among the na- 
tions. The Peninsula of Jutland then, as Korea now, 
was only newly united and coming into touch with the 
then modern life. But the great magnet of the cross 
was in France to thrill the dull iron of their hearts 
as it is not to-day in Japan. Had we done our duty 
to Japan as England then had done to Europe, 
in sending missionaries, different would be the story 
of the progress of the East in our time. 

To find a man willing to go back with Har- 
old to Jutland in those fierce barbaric days 
was well nigh impossible. At last, how- 
ever, he appeared. As S. Patrick for Ireland, 
S. Columba for Scotland, S. Augustine and S. Aiden 



1 04 The Planting of the Church 

for England, S. Ulphilas for Eastern, S. Boniface for 
Western, Germany, so now S. Anskar for Den- 
mark and Sweden. Before he was needed, the spec- 
ial man for each country had been trained and fitted 
for the work. To the dreamy and imaginative North- 
man with his curious combination of energy and con- 
templation is sent Anskar, the dreamer of dreams, 
the seer of visions and the man at the same time of 
simple perseverance, industry, and self-denial. 

Anskar' s mother died when he was only five 
years old, but it can be a comfort to many 
mothers to know that all through his life 
dreams of her and whisperings of her voice 
guided and influenced her boy. Her work was only 
begun when she left him apparently forever in this 
world. He must have been of a peculiarly gentle and 
loving disposition, for he clung to her memory in a 
way astonishing for anyone, especially a boy who 
lost her so young. He seemed to see her in heaven 
amid a bright and shining throng and to hear her tell 
him that only by casting off all love of this world 
could he join her there. This then became his ambi- 
tion and in the convent of New Corbey on the Weser 
he was a most diligent pupil and faithful novice. Soon 
to this dream of the past was added another for the 
future. He craved the glory and the honour of martyr- 
dom. And in the visions of his dreams it seemed to 
him that his Lord came to him and told him to go to 



Conversion of the Northmen 105 

Jutland and " he would return to Him crowned with 
martyrdom. " When therefore King Louis sent to the 
convent to find a man to go to what seemed certain 
death, Anskar offered. His offer was accepted and with 
a companion named Autbert he set forth. All through 
these stories one is struck by the power of companion- 
ship. Hardly any of the missionaries of those days 
go alone ; some one or many go with them and to- 
gether, one supplying the defects of the other, they 
work for Christ. 

They settled at a place called Hadeby, start- 
Hadeby m S a school and station. All was not smooth 
statin sailing. Anskar and Autbert began by pur- 
chasing children and educating them in the 
Faith. Think of that! The founders of Danish 
Christianity and civilization began with the methods 
we use now in Africa and China! But the people 
hated the religion of the French King who seemed to 
be conquering them politically and were bitterly op- 
posed to his missionaries. Anskar had to leave the 
station at Hadeby and Autbert died at New Corbey. 

The ardent missionary was not however to 
conversion be idle. Just at this moment, Biorn, the 

of Sweden 

begun then King of Sweden, sent to Louis of 
France ambassadors, who, among other ob- 
jects, came to ask that missionaries might be sent to 
them. Louis thought of Anskar and commanded him 
to leave Harold and betake himself to Sweden. An- 



106 The Planting of the Church 

other man was put in charge of the Jutland mission 
and Anskar with a monk named Widhald, set forth. 
Their journey reads like a book of adventures. Their 
ship was wrecked off the Swedish coast, and all the 
inducements they had brought with them to influence 
the Swedes to become Christians were lost. Gifts, 
books, provisions, etc., all were gone. Unable to 
speak the language or to understand the people, the 
two men struggled on over moor and fen, mountains 
and morass, until they reached the Court of King 
Biorn. It must have been a rough sort of place that 
court in those wild days among that untamed people. 
But Anskar's earnestness and devotion prevailed and 
Heriger, the King's Councillor, was one of the first 
to profess Christianity. The story of this man awakes 
enthusiasm. Almost alone in his belief among an ig- 
norant, superstitious people, he built a Church on his 
own estate and throughout his life with court favour 
or displeasure, according as the King was or was not 
disposed to favour his religion, he remained faithful to 
his Christ. Even when the missionaries withdrew 
and he was seemingly left alone, he still remained 
steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work 
of the Lord. His work was not in vain. God gave 
him his reward and the lamp which he lighted in the 
Church never went out. But this is anticipating. To 
go back to our story. 



Conversion of the Northmen 1 07 

Anskar stayed till many thanes and nobles 
Anskar were converted and it seemed certain that 

made 

the^orth tne mission would live. He then went 

back to report progress to Louis and be 
consecrated Bishop. This was done with great pomp 
at Ingelheim. Anskar then journeyed to Rome to 
receive the pallium of Archbishop of the North, 
and arrange for a joint jurisdiction with Ebbo. That 
Prelate had received authority in Jutland many years 
before and the act conferring it was still in force. He 

then returned and with Ebbo arranged that 
Ganzbert, Ganzbert, the nephew of Ebbo, should go as 
Sweden Bishop to Sweden and that Anskar should 

build a great missionary center at Hamburg. 
This was done. A large monastery with schools, set- 
tlement buildings and a Church, was erected and may 
be called the beginning of Hamburg as a great com- 
mercial and international center. " L'homme propose 
et Dieu dispose." A new King Eric succeeded the 

Christian Harold in Jutland. He was a hea- 
a then, and long and bloody battles were waged 

Persecution ° J & 

between the Christian and pagan Jarls and 
vikings of the kingdom. At one time almost 
all the viking nobility in Denmark were slain. Eric 
then turned his attention to the destruction of Ham- 
burg, that center and seed-scatterer of missionary edu- 
cation and influence. He descended with great fury. 



108 The Planting of the Church 

The inhabitants were not ready, the town was taken, 
the monastery, Church, and all the buildings burned 
to the ground and Anskar and his followers barely 
escaped. " The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken 
away, Blessed be the name of the Lord," said Anskar 
and he went to work elsewhere. 

Ganzbert meanwhile had been driven out of Sweden 
by a similar heathen reaction there. Nothing would 
induce him to return, so Anskar went boldly back in his 
place. This time he was much cheered. Heriger was 
faithful. A council of the chiefs decided that Anskar 
might preach and baptize. Erimbert, a companion of 
Anskar's, was consecrated Bishop and Anskar was 
able when he left to feel that the Church in Briba, the 
capital, was firmly and finally established. This, how- 
ever, was for Briba only. Many years elapsed before 
the waters of the Gospel trickled over the whole of 
Sweden, washing it clean from the blot of heathenism. 
Anskar now returned to Denmark. There 
Return of things were very discouraging; but the 
Denmark Bishop of Bremen having died, it was decided 
to unite that see to the rest of Anskar's de- 
spoiled bishopric and he now had plenty of men and 
means to work with. He opened a school and church 
at Schleswick, whose bell pealing over the hills and call- 
ing people to pray was a great influence. 
Eric II. being more favourable to the faith 
than Eric I., Christianity gradually estab- 
lished itself till Anskar felt able to return to 



Conversion of the Northmen 1 09 

Hamburg. There he built up again what had been 
destroyed and laboured many years. His life was 
self-denial and hardship to the end. He never re- 
laxed the rigour of his monastic rule or his simplicity 
of life. One of his most famous utterances is charac- 
teristic. " One miracle I would ask of the Lord if I 
were worthy, and that is that he would make of me a 
good man." He knew not what fear was and fought 
with all his influence against the evil of the day, 
slavery. The end however was near. His long jour- 
neys and many hardships told on his health. He was 
only sixty-four but his strength was gone. 
mm. * Sorrowfully he felt that death was near and 

Death of J 

Anskar not fa^ w j 1 j c j 1 h e h^ CO veted, martyrdom. 
He brooded over his disappointment, but one 
day he saw His Master in a vision saying : " Thou 
shalt not lose thy reward/' and so comforted he " fell 
on sleep " on the eve of the Purification 865. Seventy 
years later Gorm became the first King of all Den- 
mark and the law of Toleration for Christians in all 
parts of the kingdom, and the abolition of human sac- 
rifices was passed. 

Denmark was won for Christ, Anskar's work built 
on Ebbo's foundation was done. Ebbo's words to him 
were fulfilled, " Be assured brother that what we have 
striven to accomplish for the glory of Christ will bring 
forth fruit in the Lord; for it is my firm and settled 



no The Planting of the Church 

belief, nay, I know of a surety that though what we 
have undertaken amongst these nations is subject for 
a time to obstacles and difficulties, on account of our 
sins, yet it will not be lost or perish altogether, but 
will, by God's grace, thrive and prosper, until the name 
of the Lord is made known to the farthest ends of the 
earth." Even so come Lord Jesus in all lands. Amen. 

B. NORWAY 

Last, but not least, in the story of the conversion of 
the Teutons, we come to that of the Norwegians. 

Close con- " To Noroway, to Noroway, 

Earl i0 En f - T ° Norowa y> °' er the faem 

land and The King's boat to Noroway 

Norway , J[s there ^ takes ug haem> „ 

So sang the old ballad maker and we Anglo-Saxons 
may well repeat it, for to Norway trace we much of 
our lineage. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were 
" The Continent " to England in the eighth and ninth 
centuries. Thence came the Danish Kings and the 
inroads of Danish invasions. The Danish wars and 
counterwars preceded the later wars with France. The 
Normans too were Northmen coming by way of Nor- 
mandy to conquer England for the last time that it 
was to be conquered by an outside race. To turn to 
its story is like turning to the story of a relative and 
a friend. The missionaries here are Kings and the 



Conversion of the Northmen 1 1 1 

Court and Royal Army the propaganda of 
the Church. Wild and lawless were the 

Royal mis- 
sionaries times, restless and restive under government, 

the people. But little by little the Hero 
Kings of Norway won their way and their free brave 
people became a people devoted to the " White Christ " 
as they called him. The Norwegians seem to have 
clung to their old tribal form of government longer 
than any of the other Teutonic peoples. Two hun- 
dred years before them had the Danes and then the 
Swedes united themselves under one ruler. Not so the 
Norwegians. They remained divided into separate 
tribes and families. It is interesting to see how the 
struggle for unity of the nation, is the history at the 
same time of the advance of the Cross over the Raven 
and the Hammer of Thor. The intervals between the 
great Christian Kings are filled up with heathen re- 
lapses and national decomposition. After each period 
of disintegration, the people are more and more 
inclined to accept Christianity and the national unity 
which seemed to go with it. The story is so admirably 
sketched in Dr. Maclear's " Northmen " it seems a 
pity to retell it except in merest outline. 

As stated at the beginning of this volume, the pre- 
formation history of Missions is the history of the 
building of the nations which to-day make the civilized 
world. The Post-reformation history of Missions is 



112 The Planting of the Church 

doubtless that of the nations who will be great leaders 
to-morrow. Each nation converted in turn brings its 
own contribution to the great universal story of the 
progress of mankind from the garden of Eden to the 
city of the Great King. This is vividly seen in the story 
of Norway. Halfdan the Blackhaired was the first of 

the great Norwegian Jarls who rose above 
Beginning the others and aimed at a solid kingdom and 
Norway united policy. Living about the year 850 

and perhaps influenced by the picture of 
unity in Denmark, even then visible there; descended 
from Odin and Olave the Tree Hewer, the first ex- 
plorer and settler of Norway in the legends of the Teu- 
tons ; he conquered several of the other chiefs. In his 
reign and that of his son Harold Haarfager, the strug- 
gle to unite Norway and establish the feudal system 
was won. From the first the nobles and freeholders 
rebelled against the new dues and taxations and most 
of them, finding Halfdan too strong for successful 
resistance, emigrated to Iceland. That island and 
the Orkneys, Faroe and Shetland Islands were settled 
in consequence by the " flower of Scandinavia." It was 
this same cause which sent Hrolf the Ganger and his 
followers to Normandy. Here (after accepting Chris- 
tianity and the Baptism of Hrolf at what was after- 
wards known as Rouen, from his name Hrolf, Rue or 
Rollo) the Northmen experienced that change of char- 
acter which made out of the roving Norwegian the set- 



Conversion of the Northmen 



"3 



tied Norman. In fact these restlessnesses at home 
were the primal cause of the inroads which stained the 
shores of Europe for so many years with blood. Here 
was also one of the means whereby the people became 
Christian. Travel, that great educator, taught the 
Northman much. He wandered to Gaul, to Rome, to 
Constantinople, to England, over all we find him, and 
everywhere he found Christianity and Christian civil- 
ization. He came back and told his people what he 
had seen. It created for him and for them an ideal for 
which to strive. 

Later one of the sons of Harold Haarfager, 
Beginning his " child of his old age," named Hakon, 
ian Norway was sent to the Court of Athelstan and 

brought up by that " glorious " monarch as 
his son. He was baptized and educated as a Chris- 
tian. Years afterwards his ambition was roused to 
build for himself a kingdom in his own country, rent 
and torn by the uproars caused by his bad half broth- 
ers and their wicked wives. His design was fostered 
by Athelstan. The people flocked to his banners for 
he promised them most impossible happinesses should 
he be victorious. He was victorious, and popular. 
One of the old Jarls, Sigurd, became his especial cham- 
pion. All went well until Hakon made known the 
desire of his heart, the establishment of Christianity. 
On several occasions he had great difficulty to escape 
joining in the heathen rites at the great gatherings 



H4 The Planting of the Church 

of the people or " Things " as they were called. Finally 
at one " Froste Thing," the principal meeting of the 
year, he yielded so far as to inhale some of the horse- 
flesh offered to Odin. The people were much dissat- 
isfied; it was so clearly evident to them that he did it 
only under compulsion, while on his part the King 
chafed under the mortification and distress at having 
gone against his conscience. Like all compromises 
with evil it only made matters worse. The King 
brooded over his disgrace and shortly afterwards at- 
tacked the people of Drontheim in revenge for his 
humiliation. He was slain. Once dead, the people 
mourned him and the days of good government he had 
given them. A halo of advantages began to hover 
about his memory and he was called " Hakon the 
Good." An inclination favourable to the hitherto hated 
Christianity arose and it began to spread. Several 
years, however, elapsed before active steps were taken 
to establish it. At last a nephew of Hakon, a Chris- 
tian, became King and the people had once more a 
royal missionary. Olaf Tryggveson, great nephew of 
Hakon, escaped the fury of his aunt Gunhild, who 
tried to slay all the " king's sons," and fled with his 
mother to the court of the then King of Russia, where 

he was brought up. It is interesting to notice 
oiaf t ^ ie m ^ m3iC y °^ tne Northern nations in those 

Tryggveson days. The Emperors of Russia as legend 

tells us were themselves Norwegians, invited 



Conversion of the Northmen 115 

by the Slavs to come and rule over them, and the two 
peoples were constantly visiting back and forth. Olaf 
became a great favourite with the Empress till the Em- 
peror became jealous of him and it was thought pru- 
dent for him to leave Russia. He wandered to Vend- 
land, where he married in a most romantic manner and 
lived happily for three years. His wife then died. 
He had been most devoted to her and his grief drove 
him forth to seek consolation in travel and adventure. 
He had plenty of both. First of all a most important 
event occurred, he became a Christian. He landed on 
a little island, where after the fashion of those days a 
Culdee Anchorite had settled to live a life of solitude 
and prayer. Olaf's strong impetuous nature was won 
by the story of the Cross as told by this " solitary " 
and he was baptized. Wandering on further to Ireland 
he there married, in a still more romantic manner, an 
Irish Princess and shortly after went to England, 
where he was confirmed by the Bishop of Winchester. 
Here, left a widower, Olaf decided to return to Nor- 
way and try to win for himself the crown of his fath- 
ers. He succeeded in winning the crown and then 
like Hakon he tried to plant the Cross. The people 
as in Hakon's time rebelled and tried to force him to 
sacrifice in honour of Odin. Not weak like his great 
uncle he consented apparently to do his people's will, 
but said he would not have so poor a sacrifice as that 
they had provided. He would make a royal sacrifice and 



1 1 6 The Planting of the Church 

straightway seized on several of the principal Jarls 
for victims, shutting them up " to fatten ! " This 
cooled the ardour of the people considerably. They 
begged him to desist and after persuasion he con- 
sented, on condition that if he might not do his will 
in this case they would all consent to receive bap- 
tism. This was done, and Christianity established! 
He caught them with guile certainly. Next Olaf 
proceeded to convert Iceland and the general mass of 
his people. His success was wonderful, for all went 
well until he sought a third bride. This was none 
other than the Queen of Sweden, a most hard hearted 
lady. She had already killed two suitors in order " to 
discourage other s." Olaf nothing daunted but rather 
attracted by her bluntness proposed to wed her and 
sent her as betrothal ring the great gold ornament 
from Odin's temple. The canny lady examined the 
ring and found it only goldplated; as Olaf further in- 
sisted that Baptism was one of the requisites in his 
wife, she broke off the match. Olaf most ungallantly 
expressed himself as " content to have it so ; " and she 
angered at his indifference married out of spite the 
King of Denmark, persuading him to go to war with 
Olaf. The war assumed a religious character. The 
Kings met at sea and in a fierce fight Olaf's ship was 
taken and he himself leaped overboard to escape cap- 
ture. In all missionary history there is nothing more 
inspiring than this gallant, brave, earnest missionary 



Conversion of the Northmen 117 

King. He had a most marvelous power over the hearts 
of men. His spirits were never depressed. He was 
equal to every occasion. He never knew when he was 
defeated, and after his death the thought of his cross 
covered shield, and what it meant, haunted the memory 
of his countrymen, and has never since died out of 
the pages of their history. In spite of this however a 
period of heathen reaction intervened, till 
another Olaf known as Saint Olaf, the great- 

SaintOlaf y fe 

est hero king of Norway, came to the throne. 

He was a distant cousin of the first Olaf, a 
Christian, and on his way to the Holy Land, when a 
vision called him back to Norway to win his people 
and his realm for Christ. These dreams are like flashes 
of Northern lights in the story of the nation's conver- 
sion. 

He won his people for himself but for Christ it was 
a harder matter. He made many enemies and finally 
things reached a crisis. A pitched battle was fought 
between Olaf and the White Christ on the one side, 
with the heathen and the Jarls on the other. The re- 
sult is best given in the words of Dr. Maclear : 

" Early in his career as King we hear that on board 
his ship he was attended by a bodyguard of a hun- 
dred men. The majority of these carried shields on 
which the holy cross was painted in blue or red or 
even in some cases in gold. Their helmets also bore 
the same sacred device painted in a pale colour. * * * 

" Olaf now marshaled his troops who had daily in- 



1 1 8 The Planting of the Church 

creased in numbers since he crossed the border and 
carefully ascertained that no man who had elected to 
fight on his side in the impending battle was unbap- 
tized. Bishop and Priests were at hand to administer 
the rite to those who had not received it previously. 
This settled, the King announced that the war-cry 
would be ' forward Christ's men ! Cross-men ! King's- 
men ! ' His soldiers wore the cross both on shield and 
helmet, painted in white. He himself carried a white 
shield on which the cross gleamed in gold. They now 
sat down to rest, Olaf in their midst, and such was his 
composure of mind that he fell asleep in this anxious 
interval and dreamed a heavenly dream. But the at- 
tack came at last and the battle waged fiercely through 
the summer day. Smitten as the day wore on with 
three deadly wounds, the King passed away from earth 
with a prayer on his lips. 

" Eight hundred years have passed since ready 
armed and waiting for his last battle this great calm 
king could sleep like a little child and waking expa- 
tiate on the sweetness of his dream which the advance 
of the enemy had interrupted. Climbing a ladder 
which reached to Heaven's gate, he seemed he said 
to have but one more step to take to reach the glorious 
goal. The ' one step ' was soon taken and the golden 
threshold crossed but the picture of that halt before 
the battle is one we could not afford to lose. It was a 
grand closing scene of a life of faith : There were the 
* rest and peacefulness, the standing still, the quietness 
of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation 
unimpatient, — beautiful even when based only as of 
old, on the self command, and self possession, the per- 
sistent dignity, or the uncalculating love of the crea- 



Conversion of the Northmen 119 

ture — but more beautiful when the rest is one of hu- 
mility instead of pride and the trust no more in the 
resolution we have taken but in the Hand we hold." 

It is indeed a wonderful picture. But all his life 
was wonderful. Stained often it is true with hardness 
and cruelty, and beset with trials none but a stern char- 
acter could meet. We have him in his greatness and 
his weakness both. One of his great acts was sending 
to England for Bishop Grimkil to be his companion 
and helper in his work of conversion. And again we 
see him driven out by his people, humbly wandering 
in other lands till another vision called him back to 
fight once more for his cross and crown. It is a brave 
life and a brave death and like Samson of old he won 
" more by his death than he had by his life." 

Of all these pictures of Royal emissaries of 

the King of kings, one of the most pleas- 
Magnus ° ° x 

ing is that of Magnus, a son of this Saint 
Olaf. Brought up in his turn far from home, 
owing to the possession of Norway by Cnute and 
Swend of England, he also felt his father's yearning to 
win back his native crown. He was successful in a 
great battle, on the eve of which his father in dreams 
appeared to him promising him victory. Magnus was 
gifted with many of his father's characteristics, besides 
that of dreaming dreams. He was also a doer of 
deeds and earnest in aiding in every way the progress 



1 20 The Planting of the Church 

of Christianity in his kingdom and the establishment of 
a wise and liberal government. 

One night again in his dreams he saw his father 
who offered him a choice. " My son wilt thou follow 
me or commit a great crime thou mayest never ex- 
piate? " In his dream it seemed to Magnus that he 
answered, " Choose thou for me my father," and the 
answer came low and joyfully, " Thou shalt follow 
me." Shortly after this Magnus in riding was thrown 
and killed. His father had called for him. In the next 
reign Christianity was established, no longer to relapse, 
and the missionary history of Norway was ended. 

Soon after, that of Iceland, begun by the 
conver- first Olaf, was completed and the Norwegians 
Iceland as a race were folded in the Church of Christ. 
Culdee Anchorites had first settled in Ice- 
land, but these had cared only for themselves and had 
little or no influence on the hordes of heathen Norwe- 
gians who came over in the ninth century. 
cuidee ^ story is told of an Irish Queen, widow of 
Anchorites the King f Dublin, " known as Auda the 
rich," who came there and lived for many 
years, but she died among a people still heathen and 
was buried beyond lowtide, so that " her grave might 
not be defiled by heathen footsteps." The 
real work of conversion was begun by the 

Auda the ° J 

rich first Olaf who sent a Saxon monk, Thang- 

brand, to labour there. Olaf the Saint built a 



Conversion of the Northmen 121 

Church and finally in the fall of the year 1000 the 
people formally, in deliberate assembly, decided to em- 
brace Christianity. All were to be baptized we are told, 
but secret practices of ancient rites were not to be per- 
secuted. From Iceland missionaries worked their way 
to Greenland and by the year 1200 it might be said that 
all the Teutonic races were converted to Christ. At 
least they worshipped no heathen deity. 

The story of the Northmen has not dealt with pri- 
vate individuals as in England or on the continent. 
There has been little or none of that feminine element 
so noticed as a characteristic elsewhere of Teutonic 
conversions. Strong, manly, keen, as one of their own 
fresh Northern breezes, reads the story of these royal 
missionaries. Brilliant, glowing with enthusiasm as 
one of their Northern lights, these Cross-men of the 
North are fit examples and inspirers for the manhood 
of to-day : For the royal manhood showing them how 
kings can win their people: For wealthy manhood 
showing how they may best use their means and gifts : 
For brave courageous manhood showing how noblest 
they can live and die for their generation. 

There are many glimpses of dark cruelty in the 
story, persecutions, tortures and deeds of violence; 
but we must remember always it was not a day or time 
of nerves. Physical pain was not then what it is now 
after centuries of refinement and avoidance of suffer- 
ing. Minds were not so keenly trained and the nervous 



122 The Planting of the Church 

systems of men and women not so tinglingly near the 
surface. We must believe this so, or people could not 
have lived. The point to notice is the devotion of men 
high in life, according to the standpoint of this world, 
and what it was possible for them to do with and in 
their station for their people and for God. 

So closes the Teutonic people's missionary history. 
When we meet them again on the mission field they are 
in turn the " sent " to other nations. Let us follow 
them to the last great work of the pre-reformation mis- 
sion period, the conversion of the Slavs. It is a work 
not yet finished, but its starting takes us to the boundary 
of the Reformation days, and it has its fitting beginning 
in the dying words of S. Olaf : 

" Forward Christ-men, Cross-men, King's men." 

Amen. 



Conversion of the Northmen 



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CHAPTER V, 
Part I 

THE CONVERSION OF EASTERN EUROPE AND THE SLAVS 

We now turn to the last great conquest of 
the Cross before the Reformation. It is on a 

From West 

to East new an( j strange field. The Eastern half of 
Europe is as unlike the Western in type of in- 
habitant and civilization as it is in geographical outline 
and configuration. The Slav takes the place of the 
Teuton. The vast steppes and plains of Russia succeed 
to the valleys of France and Germany, and the hills of 
Norway and Switzerland. 

There are several new and strange peoples to 

greet us as we cross the borderland from west 

its peoples tQ east ^ There are t he Fi nnSj the aboriginal 

inhabitants of the country and formerly of 
vast numbers; the Turks, a late arrival dating from the 
ninth century; and the Letto-Lithuanians, a mixture of 
Turk and Finn. Over all these three towers the Rus- 
sian Slav. At first possessing only about one-fifth of 

"5 



126 The Planting of the Church 

European Russia (and numbering, in the earliest list 

we have of them about fourteen tribes while the Finns 

numbered thirty-three and "filled the land"), they 

now have eaten up the earth and all its people till they 

outnumber their former rivals at the rate of fifty-nine 

millions to eight and one-half or over eight to one, and 

rule over more than half of Europe besides possessions 

in Asia. 

The Slav has well been called the Teuton of 

siav and the East. The analogy is striking. While 

compared the Teutonic peoples may be grouped under 

two great heads, those of Roman and those of 
Celtic moulding, so the Slav may be classified as the 
Romanized and the Byzantinized. The Eastern Slav 
and the Western Teuton came under the Anti-Roman 
influence of the Grecian and Celtic Church, while the 
Eastern Teuton and the Western Slav fell under the 
fascination of the Roman lullaby. The Pole and the 
Bohemian, the Hungarian, and the Lieflander as well 
as the Austrian are striking contrasts to the Teuton of 
Germany and England and the Slav of Russia. 

While the real conflict of Rome with Celtic 
Rome with Christianity was practically delayed until the 

Celtic and . j j 

church Reformation, in the East of Europe it is an- 
other matter. Missionaries from Rome and 
Missionaries from Constantinople in the ninth century 
began at once a struggle for possession, which has 
abided to the present time, by its then decision. 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 1 27 

Oddly enough the cause of the conflict in 
both cases has much in common. In both it 

Cause of 

conflict j s p ar tly political, in both it is largely on the 

question of a Bible in their own or the Latin 
tongue. 

The struggle of the Reformation broke up the unity 
of the " Holy Roman Empire " in the West. The 
struggle of the Pope with the Slavic Bible and clergy 
established German sway over the Slavic countries 
bordering on the East of Germany; Poland and Pomer- 
ania, Bohemia and Lithuania being the Germanized 
victims of the Roman Missionary and conquests of the 
German crown. 

Russia on the other hand builds for itself 
of Russia under the greater freedom of the Missionaries 

under 

church from Constantinople its own literature, with 
the Bible in its own tongue at its head, its 
own kingdom subject to no foreign rule at the priests' 
dictation, and with a succession of Bishops of its own 
race, who build out of its many tribes a unified Russia 
as in England its Bishops there builded a unified Anglo- 
Saxondom. 

Had the Patriarch of Constantinople looked 
result had towards a temporal throne doubtless the fate 

Bishop r 

politician °* tne Slav in the East would have been that 
of the Teuton in the West, and a Holy Con- 
stantinoplitan Empire been opposed to the Holy Ro- 
man one we know. But the Eastern Church has never 



1 28 The Planting of the Church 

been envious of temporal power. As in the case of her 
missionaries to the Goths on the Danube, so here, her 
missionaries to the Volga builded for the people to 
whom they were sent a national Church. They first 
of all invented an alphabet, translated the Bible, next 
the liturgy into Slav, and then proceeded to train and 
consecrate a Slavonic clergy.* 

Indeed, if we omit the translations of the 
church Bible into Latin before S. Jerome, whose 
Bible version was the first generally received ver- 

sion, and recall that it was in the East, not 
in Rome, that he translated it, if we remember that 
Ulphilas made the first and only Teutonic Bible till 
WiclifFs time, that Cyril and Methodius gave the 
Bible to the Slav, and then consider that every transla- 
tion of the Bible into a new tongue in these post-Refor- 
mation days has been made by Missionaries holding 
their Bibles from Teutonic and Eastern sources, we 
may say that it is to the Eastern Church alone that we 
owe the Bible for the world. She has nobly and nota- 
bly proved herself to be the " Custodian of the Word 
of God," giving it as the great treasure to her mes- 
sengers with which to nourish the nations to whom she 



*Bible transla- 
tions due to East- 
ern Church: 



' Syriac 
Coptic 
Armenian 

r^v^L^ tr„ m ( Translations by the Teu- 

^totheliSS rL^=" ieSint ° 
I Slavic ' modern tongues 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 1 29 

sends them. The East holds not the sun, she passes 
it on from land to land till it reaches the utmost bounds 
of the West. One can fancy that this spirit of Eastern 
liberality came to England if not by other representa- 
tives, at least with the Greek Monk Theodore, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. That this spirit breathed again 
in WiclifT, Huss and Luther and so through them to 
our own day. 

We must linger here no longer, but must turn 
Slavic to t ^ ie Missionary story of the Slav. In 
paganism p a g an religion his was a more degraded form 

than that we found among the Teutons. 
Some of it reminds us of the wild Indian tribes of 
North America. They scalped their enemies and used 
their skulls as drinking cups. They had war dances 
and planted spears and shields about their burial 
mounds. They killed horses, dogs, and slaves to go 
with their masters to eternity. They worshipped a 
sword stuck into the ground, and they had thank offer- 
ings after victory. They were most superstitious and 
looked to every trifling event for augury of good or 
evil. Charms and amulets they used in abundance. 

Whatever contact with Christianity in early 
^ctVith." days they may have had (and tradition floats 

Christ- o a 1 t^-« r 1 * 

ianity b. Andrew to Kief where he predicts that a 

great Christian kingdom will be established). 

The first permanent conversion of any of their tribes 



130 The Planting of the Church 

(unless we count Armenia as belonging to them, con- 
verted by Gregory Thaumaturgus to be " the first 
Christian kingdom ") is that of Bulgaria in the ninth 
century. It came about in this wise. 

For many years there seems to have been a 
conversion bitter conflict between the kingdom of Bul- 
of Bulgaria g ar j a anc | t k e em pi re f Constantinople. Em- 
peror after emperor was attacked and har- 
assed by those wild and lawless barbarians. They 
were to the Eastern empire what the Teutons were to 
the Western. But unlike the Teutons they failed to 
conquer the city or its empire. And in turn the civ- 
ilization and Christianity of the East failed to plant 
itself at once among them. There was no general and 
immediate acceptance of Christianity such as we have 
seen among the Teutons of Gaul and Italy in Apostolic 
days. It was only after centuries of hand to hand con- 
flict of the bitterest type that the Cross prevailed. 

And first of all we hear again amid the strife 
KomS the sweet notes of woman's influence taming 

and of city . . 

of constan- these savage hearts. Early in the ninth cen- 

tinople & J 

tury a sister of the Bulgarian king was kept 
a captive in Constantinople.* Here the princess stayed 

* It is not the first time that this marvelous city, " The first 
Christian city of the world," has proved by its simple self, a 
missionary. Here it was that Ulphilas caught his inspiration, 
and here again and again, this city, the antithesis of the " Wholly- 
given-to-Idolatry," Athens, won the tardy Slav to Christ. The 
Russians most of all attest its marvelous power. 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 1 3 1 

for over thirty years and learned to know and love her 
Saviour. At the end of this long time a Christian 
monk was captured by her brother Bogoris in Bul- 
garia, and an exchange was proposed to the Empress 
Theodora. This took place and Olga as she was 
called returned to her people. Thirty years in a 
strange and Christian city had altered Olga. She was 
no longer the same princess as when a young girl she 
had left her home. She was now a Christian. By 
sweetness and by gentleness she tried to win her brother 
King Bogoris to the truth she had learned to love. But 
though impressed Bogoris was not convinced until a 
dire calamity turned his thoughts more seriously 
towards Christianity. At this far distant date it is 
impossible to decide from the conflicting) accounts 
whether it was a famine or a pestilence, perhaps both, 
which turned the scale. Bogoris prayed in vain to all 
his heathen deities for deliverance, and finally, in re- 
sponse to his sister's entreaties consented to be bap- 
tized and pray to God. 

At midnight with the greatest secrecy was 

Baptism of tne ceremony performed by the Archbishop 

ogor s photius of Constantinople, and the Greek 

emperor's name and sponsorship by proxy 
lent an almost political aspect to the occasion. It 
shows how much the religion and the empire were re- 
garded as synonymous, and explains partly the bitter- 
ness of the Bulgarians against a religion that they; 



132 The Planting of the Church 

regarded as identified with a people with whom they 
were in deadly feud, a feud that was over three hun- 
dred years old. Conversion with Bogoris was, how- 
ever, not conviction, and for several years his baptism 
was a dead letter. At last, sending to Constantinople 
for decorators for his palace two brothers 
His con- arrived which were to become celebrated in 

version 

the missionary field. Cyril was a great lin- 
guist and Methodius was an artist. Instead 
of the usual designs upon the walls Methodius depicted 
the scenes of the last judgment with such details of 
horror that Bogoris in turn threw away his idols and 
announced to his astonished people the fact of his 

baptism. 

Indignant at what they termed a betrayal of 

Revolt of tne i r country, a fierce struggle ensued be- 
s peop e tween t k e kj n g anc | t k e j 3U jj < . Q f t k e p eo pi e 

The king having once taken his stand was 
intrepid. He fought bravely with the Cross on his 
breast and would make no compromise with idolatry. 
He won. But the people were restless, the influence 
of the East was weakened by emissaries from the vari- 
ous sects of those days all teaching a various doctrine 
and finally Bogoris sent to the then Pope, Nicholas L, a 
long list of one hundred and six questions for his peru- 
sal and advice. Manners and morals as well as mat- 
ters of doctrine were comprehended in these one hun- 
dred and six dilemmas, and the Pope's answer was 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 133 

most astute as well as helpful. While rebuking the 
cruelties with which Bogoris had sought to implant 
the faith, and the haughtiness with which the customs 
of the country caused him to treat his wife, the Pope 
condemned polygamy and urged the substitution of 
Christian for heathen forms of promises and discipline. 
The result was a great eagerness for this milder form of 
the faith, and since Bogoris also sent to the Western 
Emperor for his opinion and received Bishops and 
Clergy from both Pope and Emperor, the kingdom for 
a time received quite a Western tendency. 
between This, however, provoked bitter opposition in 
Sopie anti " Constantinople, and a long series of contro- 
versial papers was the result. The Archbishop 
contended that the Romans were intruding, while the 
Romans contended that before Constantinople this ter- 
ritory had belonged to Roman dominion. Many contro- 
versialists engaged,* so that Bulgaria became as much a 
topic of political interest in the ninth century as it has 
been in the nineteenth. All without any effort on the 
part of the Bulgarians, who seem to have been " sur- 
prised at the excitement they caused." In the end, 
however, the Roman prelates and priests were dis- 
missed.! They seem to have failed here as elsewhere 



* On the Greek side Photius, Archbishop of Constantinople; 
on the Roman side Hincmar of Rheims, Odo of Beauvais, yEneas 
of Paris, Ratamnus of Corbey. 

fPaul, Bishop of Populonia; Formosus, Bishop of Portus. 



134 The Planting of the Church 

to identify themselves with the people, and the Bul- 
garians decided in favor of the East. Partly because 
the people found that political dominion was after all 
less in the mind of the East than the West. 

About this time another portion of the Slavic 
Moravia race inhabiting Moravia and Bohemia came 

and Bo- 

hemia to the knowledge of Christ. All through 
the early part of the century attempts at con- 
version had been made from the German side by 
Charlemagne and the Bishops of Salsburg and Passau, 
districts themselves but newly converted. But these 
were only successful in making the king, Rostislar, 
seek a Greek alliance to shake off the hated Western 
supremacy. The ambassador seeking the alliance was 
so much impressed by Christianity at Constantinople 
(again the city's influence is noted), that on his return 
the queen being already an earnest Christian (note 
again woman's part in missionary work!) the king's 
attention was called to this form of the faith, and the 
Greek emperor was asked to send Cyril and Methodius 
to instruct the people in their own language. Having 
finished their work in Bulgaria these untiring 
The Apostles had meanwhile gone to the Chazars, 

cnazars who eighteen years before the Moravians had 
sent to Constantinople in the same way for 
teachers. They were not the first missionaries, for the 
cause of the Chazars sending in the first place was the 
perplexity caused in the minds of their people by the di- 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 135 

vergence in teaching of Jewish, Mohammedan and 
Christian missionaries ! Among them Cyril and Metho- 
dius had had much success. They were now called to 
this new field, where they first of all invented the 
Slavonic alphabet and translated the Bible and liturgy 
into Slav. 

Then their troubles began. The German 
co^fanti- missionaries saw their power slipping away 
conflicts from them as soon as the converts were able 

I5avaria 

to use the Bible for themselves, and a struggle 
at once ensued for its suppression. The result was a 
contention which was practically political. The Ger- 
mans counted as heretics all who used the Slavonic 
liturgy and Bible. The Pope was appealed to and the 
old date of the superscription on the Cross referred to 
" written in Greek and Hebrew and Latin." The Pope 
was on the other hand reminded of the other text, 
" Praise the Lord all ye nations," and permission to use 
the Slav alphabet was given. As long as Cyril and 
after him Methodius lived the Slavonic books were re- 
spected, but after their death the German priests rose 
in a body and the Slavonic alphabet was pronounced 
the work of the devil, and the Slavonic priests obliged 

to flee to Bulgaria. In Bulgaria the struggle 

Triumph of , . 

christian- had been more or less of an intellectual one. 

ity in Bul- 

K a o r me°in The political German element was not so 
emia strong and the Slav in the end was trium- 
phant. In Moravia and Bohemia, on the contrary, 



136 The Planting of the Church 

the battle was to the death. The question of the 
languages was vital and the politics of the time ran 
high. It was more than a religious struggle, it was a 
racial one. The pope's sanction was withdrawn and a 
bitter persecution set in, together with a determined 
forcing of German arms to unite the country with the 

German Empire. Servia in the meantime 
servia was also converted and became a haven of 

refuge for the Slavonic clergy. The struggle 
waged with alternating success on each side, but finally 
Moravia and Bohemia were made German, while Ser- 
via was left with Bulgaria to Constantinople. The 
struggle, however, was not dead but sleeping, and from 
time to time since then the mighty Slavonic giant has 
turned and his groans have rent the heart of its people. 
Huss was the voice of one of these groanings, and the 
end is not yet, for still in Bohemia and in Austria this 
contention wrangles and it is the twentieth century that 
must see the end of what was begun in the tenth. 

Before closing this sketch we must hear for a 

Famous r . - 

mission- moment the names of the royal saints 01 

aries 

the period. Saints not always with stainless 
lives, but saints of earnest hearts, who in the times of 
twilight were reaching after and hastening to the dawn. 
Stumbling often and falling, but with faces to the 
eastward and the brightening signs of the coming day 
of Christ. 

There is Piligrino, Bishop of Passau, sent by the Pope 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 137 

to convert the Huns, who overran Bohemia, and be- 
came Bishop of Lorch. And Waih, the son of Geisa, 
their king, baptized Stephen, who set his face as a flint 
towards the conversion and education of his people. 
There too is Adelbert of Prague and his clergy working 
faithfully and well in the establishment of the faith. 
The Germans were not utterly bad and a vast amount 
of good is left as their memorial in those early days. 

There was a curious remnant of Celtdom left 
in Bohemia, whose very word recalls the Boii 
Celts of Caesar's time, and among them we 
find a lingering of Celtic racial characteristic. 
This permanence of racial type has been before noted, 
and is most interesting. 

Here we find the converted king Borziwoi and his 
saintly wife Ludmilla. There their son Ratislav and 
his son the martyr prince Wenceslav, patron saint of 
Bohemia. Wenceslav's death is a wonderful picture of 
peace in those revengeful times. His brother, Boleslav, 
was a bitter pagan and attacked him one day by stealth 
to kill him. Wenceslav wrested the weapon 
its patron fr° m his brother, simply saying, "God for- 
give thee, brother.'' The retainers of Boleslav 
coming in that instant supposing Wenceslav 
to be attacking their master slew him as he stood there 
with the words and smile of peace upon his lips. But 
the absence of revenge and gentleness of Wenceslav 
remained in Boleslav's heart, and he devoted one of 



138 The Planting of the Church 

his infant boys to the monastic life in its memory. 
Afterwards this boy became King Boleslav II., called 
the Pius. An earnest Christian he undid most of the 
evil wrought by Boleslav I., and his heathen brother 
Dragomira. 

We read too of Deitmar, a Saxon missionary, made 
Bishop of Prague and Woytrich, his successor, a Bo- 
hemian nobleman by birth, who gave up his position 
in the world for the one of " servant of the Church.'' 



CHAPTER V 

Part II 

There are other kingdoms, however, to which we 
must turn to complete the picture of the conversion of 
the great nations of to-day. Poland and Pomerania, 
Wendia and Liefland, Russia, Prussia and Lithuania, 
and lastly Lapland. 

First Poland. The daughter of Boleslav L, 
the Cruel, whom we haVe seen fighting his 

Poland ' & & 

brother Wenceslav, was a Christian. Her 
name was Dambrowka. She married as his 
first wife (he had four!) Mieceslav I., King of Poland. 
He was one of the advanced men of his country, and 
in those days this meant a Germanizer. He seems with 
it all to have been a sort of tyrant, for the story goes 
that one of his laws prescribing lenten fasts had added 
to it the penalty of losing all the teeth by whomever 
the law was broken! Dambrowka proved to have 
great influence. Cyril, Methodius and their Slavic 
work also influenced the establishment of the faith in 
Poland, but it was a slight and almost intangible 
effect, so that Eastern Christianity being absent as an 
opposer to Western aggressions in language and 

J39 



140 The Planting of the Church 

politics, its place as national defense was taken by- 
heathenism. Both here, and in Pomerania, which 
had been conquered by the Poles, the foreigner and 
baptism were synonymous. But in the midst of all 
these horrors of political Christianity, comes a picture 
sweet, winning and gentle, to soothe the heart of the 
student. It is the picture of Otto of Bamberg. 

The way for his coming was prepared by 
otto of an unusua l event for those days. The only 
Bamberg Sp an i sn missionary which we encounter in 

all this long list of missionaries to the nations 
of to-day was one Bernard, a monk who felt called to 
preach to the " savages " of Pomerania. Like savages 
his habit of poverty and mien of humility only im- 
pressed them as belonging to a low person, and they 
so harassed him that from Juliu he was obliged to 
fly for his life to Bamberg. There he encountered 
Otto, the Bishop, and after much urging Otto con- 
sented to try his powers. He set out early in April, 
1 124, and for four years laboured incessantly among 

the Pomeranians. He went in great style 
The s. as the ambassador of a Great King. He bore 

Patrick of ° 

pomerania presents for the chiefs of the country, and 
was surrounded by an army of soldiers and a 
large number of priests. His coming was impressive. 
He used no force but the moral effect of his ability to 
do so was great. At eleven stations he planted strong 
Church centers, one of these being the very Juliu which 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 141 

had refused the Spanish Bernard. He was very brave 
without apparently the knowledge of fear, and when 
the fierce howling people would surround him threat- 
ening his life, he simply looked at them a moment and 
then quietly proceeded to do whatever he had intended, 
destroy an idol, enter a temple, or preach to the people. 
His is one of those instances of a marvelous personality. 
Eloquent and with a pleasing voice and charming 
manners, he won all hearts. The only place unreached 
by him was the Island of Riigen, where heathenism 
reigned triumphant. Pynitz, Cammin, Julin, Stettin, 
Clothowe, Colberg, Belgrade, Demmin, Usedom, Wol- 
gast, and Giitzkow were the eleven stations of this 
wonderful man. At the end of four years his work 
was practically ended and the following year he died. 
It would be interesting to trace his footsteps in a mod- 
ern missionary pilgrimage, for he is to the Pomeran- 
ians what S. Patrick was to the Irish. His custom 
often was to send two of his priests before him to 
preach and prepare for his arrival at whatever place 
he himself would come. At other times he would 
arrive first in person with all his retinue and attendant 
pomp, and preach first himself to the curious crowd 
who listened to him. One incident is most interesting. 

On one occasion after baptizing two youths 
obse!*ance an d while instructing them in their white cate- 
?an?t^ rist " chumen garments, their mother passed by and 

saw them. She fell on her knees and thanked 



142 The Planting of the Church 

God that she had lived to see that day! Long, long 
years in secret had she hidden the fact that she was a 
Christian! So mysteriously does the seed of the 
Church float on the breeze of circumstance into some 
far off corner of a people's heart and wait there patient 
till the waters of baptism sprinkle it into life and vis- 
bility ! One other thing in connection with these mis- 
sionary labours of Otto should be noted. The re- 
leasing of Christian captives and the forgiving of pe- 
cuniary debts often of great value seems to have been 
made by him a test of Christian conversion. The 
privilege of treatment due from one Christian to an- 
other, beyond that shown a heathen, with Otto as with 
S. Paul was inculcated on his fierce Slavonic followers, 
while the forgiving of debts in that age of cruel exac- 
tion fitly inaugurated the new reign of peace. 

We now come to the conversion of Russia. 
In taking up its story and plunging into the 
mazes of unusual and to us uncouth nomen- 
clature, one is confronted in the midst of the 
puzzle by the voice of one of their historians declaring 
that the truth of the early narrative is proven, for it 
would have been impossible to forge the names! We 
sink back relieved and comforted. 

In view of the recent importance added to 
itaM°an 0f Russia in her successes in China, it will per- 

Slavs 

haps add to the interest of these pages to 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 143 

sketch the opening history of what has be- 
periods of come so great a nation. The Slav race seems 

at the outset to have been a people of many 
different tribal affiliations. They realized their lack of 
" talent for affairs," and invited a Scandinavian viking, 
one Rurik by name, to be their ruler. This was in 862. 
Rurik established his throne at Kief and for the 
next two hundred years Russian history is the story 
of the fortunes of his various descendants. From 
1054 to 1238 Russia was divided into six appanages or 
separate governments, each, however, under a de- 
scendant of the great Rurik. From 1462 comes the 
period of Mongol invasions. After which to 1632 and 
the accession of the House of Roumanoff, may be called 
the period of the amalgamation of the Russian Empire. 
The whole history of Russia is remarkable for four 
great facts, marking strong national characteristics. 

First the unusual spectacle of a race recog- 
character- nizing their need of a leader and giving an 
Sholce al invitation to come and rule them to a strange 

family; letting him bring on a sort of queen 
bee principle all his relatives to make a royal caste as 
it were for their tribes. 

The second fact of interest is the early and 
pian8 D of consistently adhered to plan for national de- 
ment 01 *" velopment. So early as 865 we are told that 

Rurik conceived the ambition of acquiring 



144 The Planting of the Church 

Constantinople. Since then Russian policy has with- 
out wavering had that definite goal in view. So 
much so that the late words of the present Emperor, 
when opening the harbour of Ta-lien-wan in China to 
all nations, " In pursuance of the historic plan," have a 
sound of peculiar signification. Faithful and unwav- 
ering adherence to one great national ambition for over 
one thousand years! It is a wonderful and unique 
occurrence. 

Third there is the story of the long and hard 
witht8?ee struggle the Slav has had with his three great 
peoples foes — Finns, Letto-Lithuanians and Turks. 
The first two have been pretty well con- 
quered. The third is still for a future struggle. This 
gradual growth of the Slav over his neighbours, the 
hardiness of character it has cultivated is checquered by 
the effect on the Russian of the races with whom he has 
struggled. The original customs of the Russian starting 
with an almost Patriarchal simplicity and equality 
of manners, have grown through contact with other 
nations into the autocratic despotism it is now, the 
most absolute of all monarchies. 

This characteristic of impressionableness 
?do P °tioi brings us to the fourth point of interest, 
TaiSt 1 " 8 *" namely their manner of conversion to Chris- 
tianity. In the latter part of the ninth cen- 
tury their Queen Olga, regent during her son's minor- 
ity, went to Constantinople and there became a most 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 145 

devoted Christian. There are legends connecting Rus- 
sia with Christianity before this, but they are legends 
only, in all probability. The one story is of S. An- 
drew's preaching at Kief. Another is that of a saint 
who, being cast into the Tiber to drown, floated into 
the Mediterranean from there through seas and rivers 
till he came to Novgorod ! The third legend is that of 
the conversion of those Russians who came first to 
besiege Constantinople. Whatever truth there may be 
in these legends (there are no uncouth names to mark 
their authenticity), no permanent success resulted from 
any of them. Queen Olga's efforts also fail, 
and it remains for her grandson, Vladimir, 
Oueen oiga tQ be the means f bringing his people to 

Christ. 

Vladimir's story is most striking. Early com- 
m A ins to the throne of his fathers, he quickly 

Vladimir o 

plunged into all sorts of crime and excess. 

Nothing is too horrible to conjure up as a 
picture of his life. Constant intercourse with other 
lands, however, brought back tidings of Christianity, 
and more and more his heart was turned to seek it. 
Finally he made an investigation of the respective 
merits of the many foreign faiths and philosophies. 
Judaism he rejected because of the destruction of their 
national life and independence. Mohammedanism did 
not please him because it would permit him to drink no 
wine, Christianity alone attracted him, but he was here 



146 The Planting of the Church 

again distracted to decide between the West and the 
East. On consulting with his people it was decided to 
send an embassy to Rome and to Constantinople to wit- 
ness in its own country the result of each form of faith. 
When the messengers returned those who came from 
Rome were not pleased. The dirt and untidiness of 
the services and churches did not impress the men 
favourably. Those who came from Constantinople, 
on the other hand, were overcome with wonder and 
admiration. They had witnessed in the great church 
of Sancta Sophia one of the most solemn and impress- 
ive ceremonies of the Greek church. The white robed 
choir had seemed to them like a vision of angels, and 
the music of the chants which rose and lost itself in the 
height of the great dome had seemed to them nothing 
less than the music of Heaven. The people with one 
voice voted for the Eastern form of Christianity. But 
Vladimir preferred to conquer his faith. He undertook 
a war with the Eastern Emperor. The hand of the 
Emperor's sister, Anna, being asked as return for his 
conversion and termination of the war. Many stories, 

probably myths, surround this marriage. The 
SSkSKa most beautiful is that when the city of Cher- 
tinopie an " zon was on the eve of surrendering to this 

horrible Northern savage, the Princess Anna 
offered to go as price of peace to a wedding she had 
hitherto resisted. 

This was accepted and she entered the heathen camp. 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 1 47 

Vladimir was suffering from a terrible affliction of his 
eyes which quite blinded him. The gentle touch of 
the princess's fingers and her earnest prayers cured the 
tortured king, and in heartfelt gratitude he was bap- 
tized. Whether we take this as true or not, one fact is 
sure, that after his marriage and conversion Vladimir 
was a changed man. The terror of his peo- 
chang^o/ pie, he became their patron saint. Cruel and 
byconver- sensual he became gentle and most strict in 
all his conduct. The vision of Vladimir be- 
fore and after conversion is the vision of two quite 
different people. The only relic of his fierceness is the 
relentless manner with which he pursued the former 
idols of the people. Perun, their favourite idol, was 
overthrown by Vladimir himself and thrown into the 
river. The people were baptized in great companies 
and the conversion of the Russian Slavs practically ac- 
complished. 

The tenacity of purpose and patience of per- 
Sfx^Hia severance in the Russian character is exempli- 
tS-Say e ° fled in their position to-day in China. Nine- 
teen hundred will see the Russians adopting 
the calendar of the rest of the world, which has never 
been officially done before. Two dates for every event 
have always hitherto been necessary to the student of 
Russian history — the Russian date and seventeen days 
later the general date. This is about to change. That is 
not all, the twentieth century sees Russia after long 



148 The Planting of the Church 

training taking her place in the commercial and so in 
the national history of her day. May her story be a 
brave and good one, commensurate to her place in the 
past. The faith and honour of the Russian peasant 
transported into the business world is much needed 
and has much to do. 

These are the stories of the more or less in- 
German- dependent Slavic nations. There are four 

izing mis- 
sions which never fully recovered their freedom 

after the extension of the Teutonic kingdom 
to the east and north, namely the Wends and Lithuan- 
ians, Prussians and Lieflanders. The tale is again a 
dark one. This time more so than usual, owing to the 
low type of clergy introduced by the Germans. What- 
ever may be the religious faults of these districts to- 
day, much must be laid to the first impressions im- 
planted by these money loving men. When the Ger- 
mans extended their empire politically, it seemed a part 
of their policy to plant bishoprics as well as feudal 
jurisdictions. In this way the sees of Havelberg, Al- 
denburg, Brandenburg, Meissen, Cisi, and Merseburg 
were founded, and the sees "banded together under 
that of Mardeburg were used as a sort of bulwark 
power against the great Germanic see of Mayence."* 
The relationship of Wend to Christianity was so in- 
volved with the question of the relationship of Wend to 



See Hardwick. Middle Ages, p. 128 note. 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 149 

German that the strife was peculiarly hot and bitter. 
Now it was Christian German, now it was heathen 
Wend who had the upper hand. And whichever held 
it persecuted violently the other. The result was that as 
gradually Christianity asserted its sovereignty over the 
people, so gradually the Germans displaced the Slavs. 
The land was Christianized but, only partially so, its 
early people. Two men, however, live in the annals of 
its history as faithful missionaries, Viceln and Dietmar. 
They laboured in truth for Christ, not for themselves, 
as so many of the other priests had done, and they won 
souls. Their fields were the districts about Bremen 
and New Munster.* Among the martyrs, too, is a 
goodly number. Indeed, the Cross penetrated all these 

places at the point of the sword. Difficulty 
Missionary after difficulty came upon them, and finally 
ordera the Order of the Sword, later merged with 

the Order of Teutonic Knights, began an 
authorized military conversion.! It was really a con- 
quest by Germany in the name of the Cross. A story 
is told of some of the converts (?) who plunged into 
the river Dwina to wash out their hated baptism, and 
let it be floated back to Germany ! 

Not all the discouragements in China to-day can be 

* Early Bishoprics, Harelburg, Aldenburg, Brandenburg, Meis- 
sen, Cisi, Merseburg, all under the Bishop of Mardeburg. 

f Compare in present day history the political aspect of the 
protection of German missionaries in Kiai Chua, China. 



150 The Planting of the Church 

more severe than those the pioneers of Christendom 
endured in Germanic Slavdom. Indeed, the Slav dies 
out as the Cross advances, and in Prussia to-day it 
is the German, not the Slav, who lives there. Indeed 
it is strange to think of it as not at all times a German 
land. 

There now remains but to speak of the con- 
version of Lapland and these glimpses of pre- 

Lapland . 

Reformation conversion are completed. The 
original heathenism of Lapland is that of the 
rest of Slavdom, except that they had a peculiar 
reverence for mountain tops as places for worship. 
Witchcraft among them was a regular pro- 
Lapiand fession, and their success in this direction 
was such that Lapland witches were sent for 
by all the surrounding country. Even Eng- 
lish works mention them, and in Russia they were very 
popular. Even after their conversion witchcraft was 
still practised, additional circles for Christ, the Virgin 
and God the Holy Ghost being added. 

Missions among them were first undertaken in the 
fourteenth century, writes Dr. Maclear, but two hun- 
dred years was required to effect their conversion. 
This event then carries us across the bridge of our 
book from one volume to the other. 

The cause of sending missionaries among 
cause of them seems to have been the treaty between 
conversion N orwav and Russia in 1326 partitioning Lap- 
land, to use modern phraseology, into Rus- 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 151 

sian and Norwegian spheres of influence. These 
spheres have been practically annexations, except that 
besides Norway and Russia, Sweden has also profited 
by the dividing up of the country. The Greek Church 
holds Russian Lapland, while the Swedish Church is all 
powerful in the other portions. S. Tryphon seems to 
have been the most active missionary from the Russian 
side, while for both sets of natives the missionaries must 
receive the credit of inventing the alphabet and giving 
the people a literature as well as a Bible. The inhab- 
itants are mostly nomadic in character. Their occupa- 
tion largely characterized tribal divisions as the "fishing 
Laps," and the " hunting Laps," etc. Fishing was more 
highly esteemed, if accounts are correct, " there being 
so many fasts in the Greek Church when only fish may 
be eaten ! " It is most touching to note that about 
Christmas time these wandering people flock to camp 
about the places where there are churches. They are 
gentle and not much given to great crimes. The most 
frequently occurring of " bad cases " being the killing 
of otter, moose and reindeer. 

As we look back over the different periods of 

Retrospect • ... . c , 

and effect missionary history, we see how far men have 

of Eeform- 

Mi£5o°n 8 differed, at least in the West, from Apostolic 
days, when the planting of the church could 
be made a matter of political ambition, as it has dis- 
tinctly been in the story of the conversion of the Slav. 
So far as the West is concerned, with the exception of 



152 The Planting of the Church 

Bishop Otto, every conversion from Bohemia to Lap- 
land has been the story of national selfishness and cov- 
etousness. We cannot help but feel that the Reforma- 
tion was needed not only for the preacher of the word, 
but for the sower of the seed. Not only for the Chris- 
tian scholar, but for the heathen. It is thus from the 
missionary standpoint that we turn now to add our 
welcome to its coming. Separating as it did church 
and state, it opened the way once more for free and 
untrammeled intercourse between men and their Sav- 
iour in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. 

The planting of the next period presents a different 
aspect, and to us perhaps is of even keener interest, 
comprising as it does the story of our own days and 
duties. 

Let us lift up our eyes to the field white already to 
harvest. 



The Conversion of Eastern Europe 153 



ANAL YSIS of Slavic Missions. 



Nation 



Chazars. 
Moravia. 



Bohemia , 



Bulgaria , 



Servia. 
Russia. 



Wends , 



Poland 



Hungary. 



Pomerania. 

Lieflanders. 

Prussia 

Lithuania. . 



laps 



Date 



.843 



..844 
.1080 



.850 



..950 

,.987 



.950 



.1047 
.1125 
.1168 
..965 



.1000 



.1057 

.1121 
.1139 

.1200 
.1280 
.1386 



.1326 

.1500 



Cause of Conversion 



Cyril and Methodius 

Christian Queen 

Cyril and Methodius 

Cyril and Methodius 

Prince Wenceslaus 

Greco-Roman conflict 

Dietmar, a Saxon ) 

Adelbert of Marde-Vat Prague, 
burg, ) 

King's sister captive in Constanti- 
nople 

Cyril and Methodius 

Christian residents of Armenia. . . 

Missionaries from Western Pope 
and Emperor 

Cyril and Methodius 

Conversion of Olga 

Embassies to Rome and Constanti- 
nople 

Wedding of Vladimir and Anna 
of Constantinople 

Slavonic Liturgy and Bible of 
Cyril and Methodius adopted 

Cyril and Methodius influence. . . ■< 

John of Mecklenburg (Irishman) < 

Gottschalk 

Pope Vicilus 

Santovit destroyed 

Queen Dambrowka, niece of 

Wenceslaus, first wife of Mie 

ceslav, a Christian , 

Queen Odo, fourth wife of Mie 

ceslav, a Christian and a German 
Hosts of French, Italian and Ger 

man priests 

Benedict VIL, sends Bishop Pili 

grin to Passau 

King Stephen 

Bernard of Spain J 

Otto of Bamberg 1 

Order of the Sword 

Teutonic Knights 

Hedwige, Queen of Poland, ; 
Christian 



Swedish, Russian and Norwegian 

Missions, result of political com. 
pact 



Present Status 



Greek Church 
Roman Communion 



Roman Communion 



Greek Church 



Greek Church 
Greek Church 



Roman Communion, 
German Protest- 
ants, Greek Church 

Roman Church and 
German Protest- 
ants 



Roman Communion 

Roman Church and 
German Protest- 
ants 
German Protestants 
German Protestants 

German Protestants 
Swedish and Greek 
Church 



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